Appendix A (AASB1038_07-04_COMPdec21_01-22)

This Appendix gives guidance on the definition of an insurance contract in section 20 of this Standard.  It addresses the following issues:
(a)    the term ‘uncertain future event’ (paragraphs 2-4);
(b)    insurance risk and other risks (paragraphs 5-14);
(c)    examples of life insurance contracts (paragraphs 15-18);
(d)    significant insurance risk (paragraphs 19-25); and
(e)    changes in the level of insurance risk (paragraphs 26 and 27).
 

Uncertainty (or risk) is the essence of an insurance contract.  Accordingly, at least one of the following is uncertain at the inception of an insurance contract:
(a)    whether an insured event will occur;
(b)    when it will occur; or
(c)    how much the insurer will need to pay if it occurs.

In some insurance contracts, the insured event is the discovery of a loss during the term of the contract, even if the loss arises from an event that occurred before the inception of the contract.  In other insurance contracts, the insured event is an event that occurs during the term of the contract, even if the resulting loss is discovered after the end of the contract term.

Some insurance contracts cover events that have already occurred, but whose financial effect is still uncertain.  An example is a reinsurance contract that covers the direct insurer against adverse development of claims already reported by policyholders.  In such contracts, the insured event is the discovery of the ultimate cost of those claims.

The definition of an insurance contract refers to insurance risk, which this Standard defines as risk, other than financial risk, transferred from the holder of a contract to the issuer.  A contract that exposes the issuer to financial risk without significant insurance risk is not an insurance contract.

The definition of financial risk in section 20 of this Standard includes a list of financial and non-financial variables.  That list includes non-financial variables that are not specific to a party to the contract, such as an index of earthquake losses in a particular region or an index of temperatures in a particular city.  It excludes non financial variables that are specific to a party to the contract.

Some contracts expose the issuer to financial risk, in addition to significant insurance risk.  For example, many life insurance contracts both guarantee a minimum rate of return to policyholders (creating financial risk) and promise death benefits that at some times significantly exceed the policyholder’s account balance (creating insurance risk in the form of mortality risk).  Such contracts are insurance contracts.

Under some contracts, an insured event triggers the payment of an amount linked to a price index.  Such contracts are insurance contracts, provided the payment that is contingent on the insured event can be significant.  For example, a life-contingent annuity linked to a cost-of-living index transfers insurance risk because payment is triggered by an uncertain event – the survival of the annuitant.  The link to the price index is an embedded derivative, but it also transfers insurance risk.  If the resulting transfer of insurance risk is significant, the embedded derivative meets the definition of an insurance contract, in which case it need not be separated and measured at fair value (see paragraph 2.2.1 of this Standard).

The definition of insurance risk refers to risk that the insurer accepts from the policyholder.  In other words, insurance risk is a pre existing risk transferred from the policyholder to the insurer.  Thus, a new risk created by the contract is not insurance risk.

The definition of an insurance contract refers to an adverse effect on the policyholder.  The definition does not limit the payment by the insurer to an amount equal to the financial impact of the adverse event.  For example, the definition does not limit payment under a term life insurance contract to the financial loss suffered by the deceased’s dependants, nor does it preclude the payment of predetermined amounts to quantify the loss caused by death or an accident.

Some contracts require a payment if a specified uncertain event occurs, but do not require an adverse effect on the policyholder as a precondition for payment.  Such a contract is not an insurance contract even if the holder uses the contract to mitigate an underlying risk exposure.  For example, if the holder uses a derivative to hedge an underlying non-financial variable that is correlated with cash flows from an asset of the entity, the derivative is not an insurance contract because payment is not conditional on whether the holder is adversely affected by a reduction in the cash flows from the asset.  Conversely, the definition of an insurance contract refers to an uncertain event for which an adverse effect on the policyholder is a contractual precondition for payment.  This contractual precondition does not require the insurer to investigate whether the event actually caused an adverse effect, but permits the insurer to deny payment if it is not satisfied that the event caused an adverse effect.

Lapse or persistency risk (i.e. the risk that the counterparty will cancel the contract earlier or later than the issuer had expected in pricing the contract) is not insurance risk because the payment to the counterparty is not contingent on an uncertain future event that adversely affects the counterparty.  Similarly, expense risk (i.e. the risk of unexpected increases in the administrative costs associated with the servicing of a contract, rather than in costs associated with insured events) is not insurance risk because an unexpected increase in expenses does not adversely affect the counterparty.

Therefore, a contract that exposes the issuer to lapse risk, persistency risk or expense risk is not an insurance contract unless it also exposes the issuer to insurance risk.  However, if the issuer of that contract mitigates that risk by using a second contract to transfer part of that risk to another party, the second contract exposes that other party to insurance risk.

An insurer can accept significant insurance risk from the policyholder only if the insurer is an entity separate from the policyholder.  In the case of a mutual insurer, the mutual accepts risk from each policyholder and pools that risk.  Although policyholders bear that pooled risk collectively in their capacity as owners, the mutual has still accepted the risk that is the essence of an insurance contract.

The following are examples of contracts that are life insurance contracts, if the transfer of insurance risk is significant:

(a)    life insurance contracts (although death is certain, it is uncertain when death will occur or, for some types of life insurance, whether death will occur within the period covered by the insurance);

(b)    life-contingent annuities and pensions (i.e. contracts that provide compensation for the uncertain future event – the survival of the annuitant or pensioner – to assist the annuitant or pensioner in maintaining a given standard of living, which would otherwise be adversely affected by his or her survival); and

(c)    life reinsurance contracts.

The following are examples of items that are not life insurance contracts:

(a)    investment contracts that are governed under the Life Insurance Act 1995 but do not expose the insurer to significant insurance risk, for example life insurance contracts in which the insurer bears no significant mortality risk (such contracts are non-insurance financial instruments or service contracts: see paragraphs 17 and 18 of this Appendix);

(b)    contracts that have the legal form of insurance, but pass all significant insurance risk back to the policyholder through non-cancellable and enforceable mechanisms that adjust future payments by the policyholder as a direct result of insured losses, for example some financial reinsurance contracts or some group contracts (such contracts are normally non-insurance financial instruments or service contracts: see paragraphs 17 and 18 of this Appendix);

(c)    self-insurance, in other words retaining a risk that could have been covered by insurance (there is no insurance contract because there is no agreement with another party);

(d)    contracts (such as gambling contracts) that require a payment if a specified uncertain future event occurs, but do not require, as a contractual precondition for payment, that the event adversely affects the policyholder.  However, this does not preclude the specification of a predetermined payout to quantify the loss caused by a specified event such as death or an accident;

(e)    derivatives that expose one party to financial risk but not insurance risk, because they require that party to make payment based solely on changes in one or more of a specified interest rate, financial instrument price, commodity price, foreign exchange rate, index of prices or rates, credit rating or credit index or other variable, provided in the case of a non-financial variable that the variable is not specific to a party to the contract (see AASB 9); and

(f)    general insurance contracts.

If the contracts described in paragraph 16 of this Appendix create financial assets or financial liabilities, they are within the scope of AASB 9.  Among other things, this means that the parties to the contract use what is sometimes called deposit accounting, which involves the following:

(a)    one party recognises the consideration received as a financial liability, rather than as revenue; and

(b)    the other party recognises the consideration paid as a financial asset, rather than as an expense.

If the contracts described in paragraph 16 of this Appendix do not create financial assets or financial liabilities, AASB 15 applies. Under AASB 15, revenue is recognised when (or as) an entity satisfies a performance obligation by transferring a promised good or service to a customer in an amount that reflects the consideration to which the entity expects to be entitled.

A contract is an insurance contract only if it transfers significant insurance risk.  Paragraphs 5 to 14 of this Appendix discuss insurance risk.  The following paragraphs discuss the assessment of whether insurance risk is significant.

Insurance risk is significant if, and only if, an insured event could cause an insurer to pay significant additional benefits in any scenario, excluding scenarios that lack commercial substance (i.e. have no discernible effect on the economics of the transaction).  If significant additional benefits would be payable in scenarios that have commercial substance, the condition in the previous sentence may be met even if the insured event is extremely unlikely or even if the expected (i.e. probability-weighted) present value of contingent cash flows is a small proportion of the expected present value of all the remaining contractual cash flows.

The additional benefits described in paragraph 20 of this Appendix refer to amounts that exceed those that would be payable if no insured event occurred (excluding scenarios that lack commercial substance).  Those additional amounts include claims handling and claims assessment costs, but exclude:

(a)    the loss of the ability to charge the policyholder for future services.  For example, in an investment-linked life insurance contract, the death of the policyholder means that the insurer can no longer perform investment management services and collect a fee for doing so.  However, this economic loss for the insurer does not reflect insurance risk, just as a mutual fund manager does not take on insurance risk in relation to the possible death of the client.  Therefore, the potential loss of future investment management fees is not relevant in assessing how much insurance risk is transferred by a contract;

(b)    waiver on death of charges that would be made on cancellation or surrender.  Because the contract brought those charges into existence, the waiver of these charges does not compensate the policyholder for a pre-existing risk.  Hence, they are not relevant in assessing how much insurance risk is transferred by a contract;

(c)    a payment conditional on an event that does not cause a significant loss to the holder of the contract.  For example, consider a contract that requires the issuer to pay one million currency units if an asset suffers physical damage causing an insignificant economic loss of one currency unit to the holder.  In this contract, the holder transfers to the insurer the insignificant risk of losing one currency unit.  At the same time, the contract creates non-insurance risk that the issuer will need to pay 999,999 currency units if the specified event occurs.  Because the issuer does not accept significant insurance risk from the holder, this contract is not an insurance contract; and

(d)    possible reinsurance recoveries.  The insurer accounts for these separately.

An insurer shall assess the significance of insurance risk contract by contract, rather than by reference to materiality to the financial statements ^[1].  Thus, insurance risk may be significant even if there is a minimal probability of material losses for a whole book of contracts.  This contract-by-contract assessment makes it easier to classify a contract as an insurance contract.  However, if a relatively homogeneous book of small contracts is known to consist of contracts that all transfer insurance risk, an insurer need not examine each contract within that book to identify a few non-derivative contracts that transfer insignificant insurance risk.

It follows from paragraphs 20 to 22 of this Appendix that if a contract pays a death benefit exceeding the amount payable on survival, the contract is an insurance contract unless the additional death benefit is insignificant (judged by reference to the contract rather than to an entire book of contracts).  As noted in paragraph 21(b) of this Appendix, the waiver on death of cancellation or surrender charges is not included in this assessment if this waiver does not compensate the policyholder for a pre existing risk.  Similarly, an annuity contract that pays out regular sums for the rest of a policyholder’s life is an insurance contract, unless the aggregate life contingent payments are insignificant.

Paragraph 20 of this Appendix refers to additional benefits.  These additional benefits could include a requirement to pay benefits earlier if the insured event occurs earlier and the payment is not adjusted for the time value of money.  An example is whole life insurance for a fixed amount (in other words, insurance that provides a fixed death benefit whenever the policyholder dies, with no expiry date for the cover).  It is certain that the policyholder will die, but the date of death is uncertain.  The insurer will suffer a loss on those individual contracts for which policyholders die early, even if there is no overall loss on the whole book of contracts.

If an insurance contract is unbundled into a deposit component and an insurance component, the significance of insurance risk transfer is assessed by reference to the insurance component.  The significance of insurance risk transferred by an embedded derivative is assessed by reference to the embedded derivative.

Some contracts do not transfer any insurance risk to the issuer at inception, although they do transfer insurance risk at a later time.  For example, consider a contract that provides a specified investment return and includes an option for the policyholder to use the proceeds of the investment on maturity to buy a life-contingent annuity at the current annuity rates charged by the insurer to other new annuitants when the policyholder exercises the option.  The contract transfers no insurance risk to the issuer until the option is exercised, because the insurer remains free to price the annuity on a basis that reflects the insurance risk transferred to the insurer at that time.  However, if the contract specifies the annuity rates (or a basis for setting the annuity rates), the contract transfers insurance risk to the issuer at inception.

A contract that qualifies as an insurance contract remains an insurance contract until all rights and obligations are extinguished or expire.