An overwhelming majority of finance
professionals believe IFRS adoption could be completed by 2016 if
the Securities and Exchange Commission made a decision to adopt the
standards next year, accoring to a recent survey conducted by KPMG
and FEI.
Nearly half of the respondents believe the SEC
will make a decision on IFRS in 2011 and three quarters said their
organisations would not adopt IFRS until the SEC requires it.
The survey findings indicate that although
familiarity with IFRS is improving, there is a lack of knowledge
among the majority of respondents and organisations have not
assessed how IFRS will affect their companies.
This lack of readiness will have an impact on
the time it will take to make the switch, according to Marie
Hollein, Financial Executives International chief executive and
president.
“Requiring adoption of the new converged
US-GAAP standards and later IFRS could create a significant burden
on companies and the FEI would hope that the regulatory process
will provide enough time for companies to understand the impact of
the new standards and have the opportunity to respond to any rule
proposals offered by the SEC,” Hollein said.
More than 900 accounting and financial
reporting executives took part in the survey.
