IFRS 16 “Leases” – financial statements disclosures for credit institutions

Abstract

The IASB published IFRS 16 Leases in January 2016 with an effective date of 1 January 2019. Leasing is an important and widely used financing solution. It is a flexible solution that allows entities to access and use property and equipment without needing to incur large cash outflows and it enables lessees to address the issue of obsolescence and residual value risk. Leases are very common in the banking and capital markets sector and IFRS 16 implementation has had a significant impact on the credit institutions’ operations and financial statements. In order to carry out their daily operations, banks have concluded a considerable number of lease contracts, mostly for spaces dedicated to their branches, ATM locations, vehicles and IT equipment.

The purpose of this article is to present the most important changes brought by IFRS 16, with the focus on the financial statements disclosures and to analyze the IFRS 16 disclosures from the financial statements of top five credit institutions operating in the Romanian banking sector. The results of the analysis highlighted that the majority of these institutions complied to a great extent with the disclosure requirements at transition date.