Essay On AMP Insurance's Accounting Management Qualitative Research.

Accounting framework used in Australia

Discuss About The Accounting Management Qualitative Research?

AMP Insurance is among the top 5 Companies which the ASX stock exchange listed. AMP Insurance was established by David Jones. The institution was established in 1849 with an intention of being non-profit life insurance institution, far along in the year of 1998, New Zealand and Australia stock exchange listed the organization after it demutualized. AMP Company is composed of: AMP bank, AMP capital, AMP insurance; self SMSF. The company has extent its connection in Malaysia, and China, Africa, Canada and to many different countries. The key products are insurance, customer solution etc. in the year 2010, AMP decided to combine its business operations with AXA Pacific holding to increase the market for insurance of Asian nations as well. Based on the company annual report, twenty fifteen, the organization is one of the best insurance providers in New Zealand and Australian. The organization provides life insurance, disability, and income protection. Presently, the company is on number two in New Zealand market and number one in Australian. This report provides a complete analysis of the organization’s accounting treatments.

AASB board is accountable for evaluating and creating the conventions and accounting standards. The conventions created are commonly made to give a universal policy for accounting to all organization found in Australia. These conventions assist in the Organization’s comparative analysis. AASB combines the 2 tiers for making the overall purpose financial statement as shown below-IE

This uses the accounting standards as per the IFRS and it also include the Australian environment. These are the core accounting standards that the organizations must follow while making the organization’s accounting statements.

it mostly comprise of the measurement, recognition, presentation needed in financial statement and the organization’s disclosure requirement.

Examples of the Accounting standard used in Australia-

These describe the overall accounting standard established by the board of IASB (Lourenço  et. al., 2015),). All the institution has to abide by the accounting standards created by the organization’s board. IFRS are established with the aim of providing a joint platform for creating comparisons among different organization’s financial statements. Almost, IFRS accounting standards are being followed by all organizations in the world, for working worldwide.

These are rules that are executed by the institution to help in the preparation of the financial statements. Therefore, it refers to a specific policies, rules and procedure which are executed by the organization’s management for bringing equality in the company’s accounting policies. The organization’s accounting policies stand for techniques that assist in disclosure of material evidences that are connected to the company and the systems that it followed. Accounting principles and policies are dissimilar terms as accounting policies are the company personal policies implemented with an intention of following accounting principles while accounting principles represents the rules of accounting (Rossouw, 2010)

International Financial Reporting Standard

AMP Limited exists as a listed Australian organization. The company uses AASB9 (the Australian accounting standard board) and Australian conventions and principles.  

The Company’s financial reporting is prepared according to Australian standards and rules and regulations of organization act, two thousand.

The organization used AASB- format of financial statements, abiding by the IFRS.

The AASB 119 standard state that employee benefits is monitored by the company. This standard states that all the agreement or plans between employee and employer, under any of the informal practices and legislative requirements are followed.

The recent accounting standards for example AASB 2014-9 which is the amendment of the Australian’s accounting standard- Equity method in different financial statement and AASB 2015-5 amendment to accounting standard of Australian.

AASB 133: This state that organization followed its earnings per share. Based on this standard, the unissued shares are grouped as ordinary shares. This has been used in determining the diluted earnings per share ( Zeff et. Al., 2010).

AASB 124 correlated to party disclosure. Based on this standard, Key Managerial personal of the company needs to reveal everything concerning material transactions with that of the organization. For the CEO, the AMP group, the non-executive directors of the board, and the actual persons who straightly reports to Chief Executive Officer Forms represents the KMP.

AASB 9: this deals with financial instruments. Based on this standard, it have combined different changes in financial presentation of the financial instruments, new expected loss approach is incorporated to evade disclosure and the accounting requirement. The company will start implementing the standard from 31/12/2018(AASB  Standard, 2010).

AASB 2: It deals with share based payment. The standard is used when the organization undertake payment for financial transaction as per share based. The company has used the similar standard in implementing its transaction.

Based on the annual report of the year 2015, the company has been using mostly all the Australian policies and accounting standards.

Accounting standard used include: AASB 119, AASB 133, AASB 124, AASB 101, AASB2, AASB 9, AASB 2 etc. financial presentation of the company has been presented in a clear manner. Various accounting standards have been presented by the Annual reports to be followed in future.

Concentrating on the earlier scandals of the companies, it was clear that the organization was un able to give the financial advice to those who buy its products in accordance with the company guidelines. The company was extremely for not giving right advice and guidance, to those who buys its product despites putting a higher amount of fees. Additional, the company was made to deliver the payout to its customers.

Accounting Conceptions and framework implemented by AMP Company

The remaining four banking and AMP has been included in the stealing of the interest rates and therefore, over pricing the customers. This has led to an upsurge to those who buy their products and affected the performance of the Australian insurance and banking sector. However, the banking institutions have been indulge in protecting the high interest rate meant for credit cards and home loans. Nevertheless, the authorities demanded for providing to their customers.

Though, the overall opinion concerning the accounting policies and conventions of the company, suggest that the organization apply the accounting standards and conventions and the remaining available rules and regulations. This explains the core point behind the rise in profit and revenue of the company.

Based on the Australian commission, the financial advice provided by the consultants does not adhere to the Australian law and regulations. The commission even requested the company to pay back to payback the amount to those who buy products but does not obtain proper fees.

The company has majorly charged higher amount of fees from customers but it has not provided them with suitable financial advice. This has formed adverse effect on the company over their customers. The organization has not been paying back the legitimate claims of the customers.

Based on the ASIC’s report, financial assistance: fees for unavailable service.    The customer payments of around 178 were squandered by the four organizations and there were no proper services payment for the amount charged.

Because of the wrong choice of publicity, the organization was unable to raise its revenue and this led to its down fall.

Inadequate accountability in the company is the largest default. The company was unable to come up clean for the wrong financial planning in the company.

Another scandal of the company relates to the unfair charging of interest. The core four insurance and banking organizations were found to be wrong due to charging excessively by the entire customers.

It was one of the major scandals in Australia. There consequences were high and this lead to bad publicity of the available banks that are involved. This has led to customers’ dissatisfaction and incorrect impact over the prospective and current of the company. And, reliability and trust factor of the entire customers has fully vanished because of this.

Disclosures for appropriate facts and figures- the company must disclose the appropriate figures alongside facts linked to financial data. Such data are helpful for each stakeholders including suppliers, distributors, shareholders, customers, among others. With financial reporting aid, stakeholders scheme respective financial decisions linked to the company. Thus, any unanticipated data is able to mislead stakeholders and lead irrelevant financial decisions (Tucker et. al., 2016).

Observations

Effective accounts maintenance of for finance receipts recording based on services offered must be performed. The accounting alongside financial recording have to be upheld for at least five years to allow comprehensive analysis. Further, a probe is able to be performed smoothly.

Efficient customers profile maintenance of has to be kept to allow proper marketing and sales’ tasks to occur. This shall additionally boot the company’s revenues and sales. Such a profiling is the key agenda for an insurance company since it helps in improving the revenues of the company.

The company must abide by all the regulations and laws formed for the regulation of the insurance sector in the country like Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA).

The company has to remain accountable for the actions it undertakes. Clients typically preferred those companies that the accountability of their respective actions.

The financial advise offered by the company, must be according to rules alongside regulations.

The company has to comply with accounting standard including AASB 4 of Insurance contracts because this remains a highly requirement for the company. Such a standard exactly tells the company to expose about uncertainty alongside cash flows of the volume it has invented. The financial statements must show info relating to the risk alongside additional associated factors.

The company must tighten the training, compliances, disclosure, practices, product advice, alongside document handling among other to in bar the future scandals of offering wrong financial and insurance advice.

The company must offer greater openness in the accountancy alongside financial reports of the company. This will ensure that financial interpretation doesn’t mislead the clients in making wrong choices about the financial decisions. Openness is highly required in the accountancy, thus, it must never be compromised at all cost (Elliott et. al., 2010).

The company has to utilize efficient accounting treatment in preparing financial statements alongside financial reporting. Efficient accounting treatment culminates in effective accounting data alongside correct financial interpretations (Biondi & Lapsley, 2014).

The company has to create enhanced multi-channel for distributing insurance policies alongside strategic management policies’ preparation for enhancing the insurance sales.

The company must use proper training for novel workers. Both insurance and finance specialist must offer several training session workers to evade the wrong advice proviso to the clients.

Timely claims ’payment to company customer alongside effective and correct accounting records. For insurance company to survive, it is essentially imperative to offer the claims to its clients as they emerge. Such a move will culminate in increased reliability and trustability of clients towards the company.

Accounting scandal of the company

Money wastage in laws and litigations- Insurance remains a single most sensitive companies. Incorrect info and manipulation in regulations and rules can culminate in litigations alongside disputes amongst the clients. Thus, litigations, as far as possible, must be avoided. Such a move shall save much time and money.

Competition in insurance industry is increasing daily. The organization’s, main threat is new entrants. Albeit the company capturing a large market share in the industry, the increased stiff competition is improving the risk for the leaving organization. Thus, there is a large need for right planning, organizing, as well as controlling for this industry’s products. This will help in sustaining Australia’s competition level.

Customers Empowering- Clients remaining increased empowered the establishing further regulations and laws have ensured they are increasingly powerful. Hence, a proper solution alongside advice has to be availed to the clients (Gatzert et. al., 2014).

Raising awareness amongst the clients- with an increasing media alongside internet sources, the clients remain increasingly knowledgeable regarding the products of products. Clients alter their attitude with the conforming gains offered the insurance companies. Thus, effective planning and advertisements has to be made to appeal as well as retain organizational customers.

Increasing regulations and laws- As opposed to the past era, numerous laws alongside regulations besides authorities for the regulation of insurance industry in Australia. Organization must comply with each rule and regulation to safeguard the organization from making any faults or inconsistencies.

The company has already been facing large decline in product segment growth in the insurance A huge plunged in products of insurance has been observed.

Because of the situation, the official suggested that the total amount to be taken back to customers plus the interest. This has led to some kind of relief to the organization’s customers and saved the trust alive.

Conclusion

Based on the analysis of the various policies used in accounting of APM group, it is true that accounting policies and standards perform a major function in the financial interpretation. APM act as the major insurance and banking organization of Australia. The departments of the company have been distributed in several parts of the world. And the company is placing its effort in becoming one of the best in both Australia and New Zealand.

References-

Rossouw, J., 2010. Empirical results of the accounting policies chosen by South African listed companies. Meditari Accountancy Research, 18(2), pp.38-56.

Lourenço, I.M.E.C., Branco, M.E.M.D.A. and Castelo, D., 2015. Main consequences of IFRS adoption: analysis of existing literature and suggestions for further research. Revista Contabilidade & Finanças, 26(68), pp.126-139.

Elliott, W.B., Krische, S.D. and Peecher, M.E., 2010. Expected mispricing: The joint influence of accounting transparency and investor base. Journal of Accounting Research, 48(2), pp.343-381.

Gatzert, N. & Kolb, A. 2014, "Risk Measurement and Management of Operational Risk in Insurance Companies from an Enterprise Perspective: Risk Measurement and Management of Operational Risk in Insurance Companies", Journal of Risk and Insurance, 81, no. 3, pp. 683-708.

AMP, 2015, “Annual Report”, AMP Limited.­

Tucker, B.P. & Schaltegger, S. 2016, "Comparing the research-practice gap in management accounting: A view from professional accounting bodies in Australia and Germany", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 362.

Biondi, L. & Lapsley, I. 2014, "Accounting, transparency and governance: the heritage assets problem", Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, 11, no. 2, pp. 146-164.

Kober, R., Lee, J. & Ng, J. 2013, "GAAP, GFS and AASB 1049: perceptions of public sector stakeholders", Accounting & Finance, vol. 53, no. 2, pp. 471-496.

Zeff, S.A. & Nobes, C.W. 2010, "Commentary: Has Australia (or Any Other Jurisdiction) Adopted IFRS", Australian Accounting Review, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 178-184.

AASB Standard (2010), “Financial Instrument”. Australian Accounting standard board.