With profits providers are under additional pressure today following the Penrose Report's identification of Equitable Life's ability to obfuscate the real situation with regards to its assets and liabilities.
This was made possible because of slack rules on accounting for with profits business, the report says. However, Lord Penrose's most damning point is that the issue of accounting deficiencies is not company-specific, but one stretching across the entire with profits sector. "The industry cannot be left to its own devices," Penrose says in his piece reviewing the accounting of with profits. "Without specification of standards, there would continue to be wide scope for differences of opinion that left financial statements substantially meaningless in absolute terms, and difficult to ...
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