IFRS 7: Disclosure of Financial Instruments Do European banks comply with the new standard in terms of credit risk and risk management?

Abstract: With the increasing complexity of banking operations, the demand for extensive disclosure has advanced over the years. In 2007, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has consolidated and expanded disclosure requirements related to financial instruments in IFRS7. Arguably, the adoption of IFRS7 in Europe was met with substantial differences in implementation among countries. Moreover, IFRS7 was launched a few months before the global financial crisis hit Europe. This study examines the level of disclosure according to IFRS7 of 12 banks spread across Europe using their annual accounts from 2007-2010. The banks were chosen on the basis of their market capitalization by the end of 2007. A disclosure index based on IFRS7 was created for this study to evaluate the level of disclosure of the banks. After examining the disclosure level, this paper analyzes if there is a correlation between compliance on disclosure index and bank performance as measured by the Total Shareholder Return. This study aims to find out if a high compliance significantly affects performance in terms of TSR and if it helped banks weather the global financial crisis. The background part provides a broad perspective on disclosure, financial reporting, accounting standards, and IFRS7. It also provides a situation on bank run, and on the recent financial crisis. With the use of secondary data from published accounts of banks, the empirical study presents the disclosure level of banks and TSR performance. The findings suggest that most banks have a selective compliance and moderate fulfillmenton disclosure obligations. Inadequacy is particularly seen in areas where additional disclosure is required by using the implementation guidance of IFRS7. The correlation between compliance and performance is seen to be very minimal which suggests that a high disclosure during a financial crisis does not help prevent huge financial losses.