The Financial Accounting Standards Board has added a new project to its crowded agenda: the impairment of intangible assets with indefinite lives.
The new project has been added by FASB chair Leslie Seidman in response to feedback that the board had received on another of its projects, its proposed standards for goodwill impairment (see page 51).
The new project is intended to be a short-term project with the narrow scope of simplifying the manner in which an entity tests other indefinite-lived intangible assets for impairment. However, FASB did not provide a timeline for completion of the new project or how it would fit into the goodwill impairment project.
Separately, FASB received feedback on another of its projects, for insurance contracts, from an insurance industry association, the Group of North American Insurance Enterprises, urging it to make substantial changes in its proposed standards. The insurance industry group asked FASB to consider creating separate models for short-duration non-life insurance contracts and another for long-duration life insurance contracts.
