UK businesses could save money under new data laws; FRC revises TAS 100

New UK data protection laws, introduced by the government this week, are aimed at reducing costs and burdens for British businesses and charities, removing barriers to international trade, and cutting the number of repetitive data collection pop-ups online.

A government news release said that the UK version of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) would save the economy £4.7 billion over the next ten years.

The news release said that the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, first introduced last summer, will take "the best elements of GDPR and [provide] businesses with more flexibility about how they comply with the new data laws."

The bill also would:

• Reduce the amount of paperwork organisations need to complete to demonstrate compliance;
• Support more international trade without creating extra costs for businesses if they're already compliant with current data regulations;
• Provide organisations with greater confidence about when they can process personal data without consent; and
• Increase public and business confidence in artificial intelligence technologies by clarifying the circumstances when robust safeguards apply to automated decision-making.

Canada joins the UK to boost green supply chains

The UK and Canada reached an agreement to cooperate on critical minerals such as cobalt and lithium that are essential to the economy and used in items such as solar panels and electric vehicles, a UK government press release said. Demand for certain critical minerals is expected to rise by as much as 500% by 2040.

IASB concludes project on disclosure requirements

The IASB concluded a project on improving its approach to developing and drafting disclosure requirements, a news release said. The improved approach is designed to help develop standards that would enable companies to make better judgements about which information is material and should be disclosed, thereby providing more useful information to investors.

According to the release, the improved approach involves:

• Engaging early with investors to understand their information needs;
• Developing disclosure requirements alongside recognition and measurement requirements;
• Considering the digital reporting implications of new disclosure requirements;
• Using general and specific objectives that describe and explain investors' information needs; and
• Supporting specific objectives by requiring companies to disclose items of information that would satisfy the objectives in most cases.

The project summary and feedback statement provides an overview of the exposure draft Disclosure Requirements in IFRS Standards — A Pilot Approach. The IASB has decided not to proceed with any further work on the disclosure requirements in IFRS 13, Fair Value Measurement, and IAS 19, Employee Benefits, the publication said.

FRC publishes revisions to TAS 100

The UK Financial Reporting Council (FRC) published a revised Technical Actuarial Standard 100 (TAS 100) and its associated guidance, a news release said. The new version of the standard includes revisions to ensure that it reflects current practices in actuarial work and addresses known gaps in the quality of work.

The revised standard includes a new requirement that actuarial practitioners must consider all relevant material risks, including climate change and environmental, social, and governance-related risks, that they might reasonably be expected to know about at the time of carrying out their work, the release said. It also introduces a new application section that sets out the FRC's expectations and allows practitioners to have a better understanding of how to interpret and comply with the principles.

The standard applies to technical actuarial work that is completed on or after 1 July 2023, the standard publication said.

— To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Steph Brown at Stephanie.Brown@aicpa-cima.com.