A convergência contábil e o conservadorismo na provisão para créditos de liquidação duvidosa nas instituições financeiras no Brasil

Abstract

With the enactment of Resolution no 3786/2009, the Central Bank of Brazil, financial institutions began to prepare and publish since December 31, 2010 in addition to the existing standards, the consolidated financial statements according to International Financial Reporting Standards - IFRS. Such procedures have caused a major change in the technical and legal framework due to existing conceptual differences between local standards - BRGAAP and international standards - IFRS. This work aims to verify whether the accounting convergence is altering the degree of conservatism in constitutions of allowance for doubtful accounts in the Consolidated Financial Statements published by financial institutions in Brazil, and whether the characteristics of the financial institutions such as size, profitability, control capital, market segment, listed on stock exchanges and public or private sector could influence the constitution of the provisions. For that were examined in the two accounting standards, the financial statements of forty-three financial conglomerates in the period 2009-2013, which represented 93% of the assets of Sistema Financeiro Nacional (National Financial System) at December 31, 2013. The results revealed differences statistically significant of provisions between the two accounting standards, showing that local standards are more conservative relative to international standards. Showed, too, that although starting from the same operations the institutions obtained different results due to the use of different standards for recognition, measurement and disclosure. On examination of the independent variables was found that there are specific groups of banks with larger discrepancies between the balances of provisions in the two financial statements indicating that the characteristics of financial institutions could influence the constitution of the provisions.