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Malaysia’s New Statistical Reporting System (NSRS)

This comment piece looks at the new requirements that all Financial Institutions in Malaysia must now meet in accordance with MASB and BNM.

Introduction

Since the early 2000s, the Malaysian Accounting Standards Board (MASB) has been committed to the convergence of Financial Reporting Standards (FRSs) with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). According to a June 2007 MASB press release, prior to 2005, the policy of the Malaysian accounting standard-setters had been to adopt international standards and adding additional explanatory guidance and examples in order to reflect local circumstances and cover topics not addressed in the international standards. However, differences between FRS and IFRS still persisted and on 1st August 2008, MASB announced the convergence policy with IFRS in 2012.

Convergence with IFRS would entail full compliance with IFRS as a basis for financial reporting in Malaysia for interim and annual financial statements beginning on and after 1st January 2012, both in content and timing of implementation.

Then in August 2010, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) announced that they had conducted extensive reviews of the existing data submitted by financial institutions and the statistical reporting systems. In this respect they would develop and implement a new statistical submission system with a standardised reporting framework and infrastructure. This would minimise the differences between Financial Reporting Standard (FRS) and International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS). The revisions by BNM to the taxonomy has been named New Statistical Reporting System (NSRS).

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