Over the last eight years (longer if one were to consider the events, initial inquiries, comments and processes that got us there), there has been a significant shift surrounding how to account for losses embedded in financial assets. Historically, accounting literature (primarily outlined in statement on financial accounting standard (FAS) No. 5, accounting for contingencies (FAS 5) and supplemented by industry-specific releases or considerations made by the staff of the SEC) established and affirmed that the threshold for measuring contingencies or, more specifically, losses from financial assets or instrument, was whether such loss was “probable.”

The mortgage crisis and ensuing Great Recession of the late 2000s ushered in a new perspective on whether that approach was properly measuring and, as importantly, informing investors of the risk of loss embedded in an entity’s balance sheet. The reconsideration asks entities to make a more wholesome consideration of the “possibility” for credit losses and, most notably, expects that SEC filers and private entities alike take a more “forward-looking” approach to recognizing and reporting credit losses—referred to as current expected credit losses (CECL).