Accounting and audit

The new accounting regulation IFRS 9 aims to buttress financial stability against future crises.  It obliges financial institutions to more faithfully reflect credit risk and calculate provisions for insolvencies following an expected loss model (versus the previous “incurred loss” model). For a majority of financial institutions, this has resulted in an increase in provisions and the subsequent impact on capital.

Mª Ángeles Peláez, Head of Group Financial Accounting at BBVA, underscored the importance of the role of the expert accountant in correctly interpreting the wording of regulations in an environment of constant regulatory change. This was one of the subjects debated at the workshop on Standardization and Accounting Law organized by the Spanish Association of Accounting and Business Administration (AECA) at BBVA’s headquarters in Madrid.

Regtech is the new concept that is revolutionizing financial technology. Regtech is paving the way for a new wave of startups that, leveraging technologies such as cloud computing or big data, are looking to save banks a lot of the time and resources they devote to ensure regulatory compliance.

Today the European Banking Authority (EBA) released the final methodology and macroeconomic scenario for upcoming stress tests of the 53 main European banks, including BBVA.

Like all beginnings of decades, the symbolic date of 2020 raises all sorts of expectations and questions in these previous years about transformations to various activities, and financial services are no exception. From the technological innovations foretold at the Fintech Conference to the challenges set by the PwC study Retail Banking 2020: Evolution or Revolution?, all experts seem to agree on one thing: there will be profound changes in the sector over the next six years.