IFRS Standards and insurance companies : what stakes for long-term investment? A french case explanatory analysis.

Summary This paper investigates to what extent IFRS standards may cause incentives or constraints on long-term investment strategies of French insurance companies, based on 43 semi-structured interviews of insurance companies' managers, regulators and professional organizations in France. Our results show that practitioners highlight some issues related to the capacity of current IFRS accounting rules to give a fair representation of their activities related to their specific profile. First, they underline an artificial mismatch between assets and liabilities measurement related to IAS 39 and IFRS 4 phase 1. Second, they point out effects on their asset allocation strategies due to the increased short-term volatility introduced by fair value measurement. After investigating solutions to recognising the long-term horizon in asset category, we discuss the necessary consistency of accounting standard for representing long-term business.