Ind AS 107 requires entities to provide disclosures about financial instruments that enable users to evaluate two things: the significance of financial instruments for the entity's financial position and performance, and the nature and extent of risks arising from financial instruments and how the entity manages those risks. It is the disclosure member of the financial-instruments trio — Ind AS 32 (presentation), Ind AS 109 (recognition and measurement), and Ind AS 107 (disclosures). Because the AS framework has no comparable financial-instruments regime, Ind AS 107 has no direct equivalent, making comprehensive financial-instrument risk disclosure a distinctive Ind AS feature.
Objective and scope
The objective is to require entities to provide disclosures in their financial statements that enable users to evaluate the significance of financial instruments for the entity's financial position and performance, and the nature and extent of risks arising from financial instruments to which the entity is exposed during the period and at the end of the reporting period, and how the entity manages those risks. The standard applies to all entities and to all types of financial instruments, except those specifically scoped out (for example, interests in subsidiaries, associates, and joint ventures accounted for under the relevant standards, and certain employee benefit plans and insurance contracts). It complements the recognition, measurement, and presentation principles in Ind AS 32 and Ind AS 109.
Two categories of disclosure
Ind AS 107 organises its requirements into two broad categories: disclosures about the significance of financial instruments, and disclosures about risks arising from financial instruments.
Significance disclosures
These disclosures help users understand how financial instruments affect the entity's financial position and performance. They include:
Balance sheet disclosures — the carrying amounts of financial assets and financial liabilities by the categories defined in Ind AS 109 (for example, those measured at amortised cost, at fair value through other comprehensive income, and at fair value through profit or loss); information about financial assets or liabilities designated at fair value through profit or loss; reclassifications; offsetting of financial assets and liabilities; collateral; and the allowance for credit losses.
Statement of profit and loss disclosures — items of income, expense, gains, and losses, such as net gains or losses by category of financial instrument, total interest income and interest expense (for instruments not at fair value through profit or loss), and fee income and expense.
Other disclosures — the entity's accounting policies for financial instruments; hedge accounting disclosures (the entity's risk management strategy, the effect of hedge accounting on the financial statements, and the effects of hedging on future cash flows); and fair value disclosures, including the methods and assumptions used to determine fair values and, importantly, disclosure by fair value hierarchy level (the three-level hierarchy under Ind AS 113 — Level 1 quoted prices, Level 2 observable inputs, Level 3 unobservable inputs), with additional information for Level 3 measurements.
Risk disclosures
These disclosures give users a picture of the entity's exposure to risks arising from financial instruments and how it manages them. For each type of risk, the entity discloses qualitative information (the exposures and how they arise, and the entity's objectives, policies, and processes for managing the risk and the methods used to measure it) and quantitative information (summary quantitative data about the exposure at the reporting date, based on information provided internally to key management personnel). The standard focuses on three main risks:
Credit risk — the risk that one party to a financial instrument will cause a financial loss for the other party by failing to discharge an obligation. Disclosures include information about the entity's credit risk exposure, credit risk management practices, and the expected credit loss (ECL) information required under the Ind AS 109 impairment model — for example, the amount that best represents the maximum exposure to credit risk, information about credit quality, and reconciliations of the loss allowance.
Liquidity risk — the risk that an entity will encounter difficulty in meeting obligations associated with financial liabilities that are settled by delivering cash or another financial asset. Disclosures include a maturity analysis for financial liabilities showing the remaining contractual maturities, and a description of how the entity manages the liquidity risk.
Market risk — the risk that the fair value or future cash flows of a financial instrument will fluctuate because of changes in market prices, comprising currency risk, interest rate risk, and other price risk. Disclosures include a sensitivity analysis for each type of market risk to which the entity is exposed, showing how profit or loss and equity would have been affected by reasonably possible changes in the relevant risk variable.
A brief illustration
A company holds trade receivables, bank borrowings, foreign currency payables, and some investments in equity and debt instruments. Under Ind AS 107, in the significance disclosures it presents the carrying amounts of these financial assets and liabilities by Ind AS 109 category, the related gains and losses and interest, its accounting policies, and fair value information (including the fair value hierarchy level of its investments). In the risk disclosures, it explains and quantifies its credit risk on receivables (including the expected credit loss allowance and its ageing), its liquidity risk through a maturity analysis of its borrowings and payables, and its market risk — for example, a sensitivity analysis showing the effect on profit of a reasonably possible change in exchange rates (currency risk) and in interest rates (interest rate risk). A reader can thereby assess not only the amounts but the risks the company runs through its financial instruments. Under the AS framework, this depth of financial-instrument risk disclosure is not required.
Why there is no AS equivalent
The AS framework does not have a standard equivalent to Ind AS 107. Because the corresponding AS-framework financial-instruments standards (AS 30, 31, and 32) were withdrawn and never made mandatory, there is no comprehensive financial-instrument disclosure regime under AS comparable to Ind AS 107. As a result, entities applying the AS framework provide considerably less structured information about the significance of, and the credit, liquidity, and market risks arising from, their financial instruments. Ind AS 107 (with Ind AS 32 and Ind AS 109) introduces a comprehensive disclosure framework that has no counterpart under AS — one of the clearer gaps between the two frameworks.
Common pitfalls
Recurring issues include omitting or under-developing the qualitative risk-management narrative for credit, liquidity, and market risk; failing to provide the required quantitative disclosures (maturity analysis for liquidity risk, sensitivity analysis for market risk, and expected-credit-loss information for credit risk); not disclosing fair values by hierarchy level (particularly the additional information for Level 3); and not aligning the disclosures with the categories and impairment model in Ind AS 109.
Why this is cleaner on a unified system
Producing Ind AS 107 disclosures — categorising financial instruments, computing expected credit losses, preparing maturity and sensitivity analyses, and determining fair values by hierarchy level — requires detailed, connected data about receivables, borrowings, currency and interest exposures, and investments. When the records of financial instruments and the ledger sit in one connected system, extracting the carrying amounts by category, the credit-loss allowances, the maturity profiles, and the exposure data needed for the risk disclosures is more straightforward than assembling the information from separate tools, and the resulting disclosures tie back to the recognised amounts by construction.
This article is a detailed educational summary of Ind AS 107 in plain language. It is not a substitute for the full text of the standard. Accounting standards are amended from time to time; always verify the current, authoritative text of Ind AS 107 as notified under the Companies Act before relying on it, and consult a qualified chartered accountant for application to your specific circumstances.