we don't really have a proper International Accounting standard for insurance at this moment we have I for s4 but that is no more than a stopgap measure which allows insurance companies to report using national standards all national standards we know for example of one insurance company that reports under two national standards under one standard it's making a profit and under the other standard is making a loss and that shows how wildly divergent they can be and obviously that is a very unsatisfactory situation for investors insurance is a very important part of the global economy insurance companies that use IFRS have total assets of more than 13 trillion dollars so that's a huge amount of money and it is obviously extremely important that investors have proper insight in how these insurance companies are doing are they making a profit are they making a loss are they exposed to many risks and we believe that proper insight in these risks and opportunities are also very important for financial stability we have issued I for a 17 which is the first truly international and high quality standard for insurance activities insurance companies will have to use updated information as opposed to historical information and it will give for that reason investors a much more realistic insight in where the insurance company stands how it performs and what its risks are the effective date of IFRS 17 will be 2021 which means that companies will have three and a half years to prepare implementing these standards that should be enough time nevertheless we know it's going to be a huge undertaking for most companies and that's why the ISB will help the industry prepare for the new standard we will establish a transition resource group which is basically a forum for both companies and for auditors to discuss any difficulties that they might encounter and to help them resolve those difficulties we will develop educational material both for the companies to help them prepare for the standard and also for investors to help them better understand the information that comes from the standard we have been working on the standard for more than 10 years which is a very long time but we believe it was worth the wait we truly have a high quality standard now it will help investors to understand the insurance industry much better and we believe that is good for investors but we also believe it's good for the insurance industry itself