Philippines will allow proxies as IFRS 9 stopgap measure

Central bank to issue guidelines to help address the shortage of data for compliance

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas: plans to discourage use of proxies in favour of more conservative provisioning

The central bank of the Philippines will allow the use of proxy credit default data for implementing the expected credit loss accounting rules in International Financial Reporting Standard 9 (IFRS 9), but says this should only be a stopgap.

“Where data doesn’t exist, proxies are permissible, but we will require banks to have sound internal policies about how they are used,” says Nestor Espenilla, deputy governor of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). “Banks should be able to document the reasons