New Accounting Pronouncements

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2020

Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements [Abstract]

New Accounting Pronouncements

New Accounting Pronouncements

The following new accounting pronouncements were adopted effective January 1, 2020:

•Financial Instruments - Credit Losses In June 2016, the Financial Accounting Standards Board ("FASB") issued an Accounting Standards Update ("ASU") that significantly changes measurement of credit losses. The ASU requires recognition of lifetime ECL for loans, securities held-to-maturity, off-balance sheet credit exposures and certain other financial assets reported at amortized cost. In addition, the new guidance requires inclusion of expected recoveries of amounts previously written off, limited to the cumulative amount of prior write-offs, when estimating the allowance for credit losses for in scope financial assets (including collateral-dependent assets). For available-for-sale debt securities where fair value is less than cost, the ASU requires that credit-related impairment, if any, be recognized through an allowance for credit losses and adjusted each period for changes in credit risk. Modeling and economic forecasting requirements of the ASU are new and extensive, and the ASU's requirements differ significantly from the IFRS credit loss reporting that we implemented in 2018 for reporting to HSBC. The ASU also requires expanded disclosures. See Note 4, "Securities," Note 5, "Loans," and Note 6, "Allowance for Credit Losses," for the new disclosures required by this standard, including further discussion of our accounting policies and methodologies used to estimate ECL beginning in 2020. The adoption of this guidance required a cumulative effect adjustment to retained earnings as of January 1, 2020, which resulted in the following impacts:

◦a decrease in our allowance for credit losses on funded loans of $170 million;

◦an increase in our liability for off-balance sheet credit exposures of $54 million; and

◦including but not limited to the items above, an increase in retained earnings of $82 million, net of tax.

The decrease in our allowance for credit losses on loans was driven by a decrease of approximately $126 million for commercial loans reflecting the impact of their short contractual maturities and the benign credit environment at the time as well as a decrease of approximately $44 million for consumer loans as the impact of their lifetime losses was more than offset by expected recoveries of previous charge-offs of collateral-dependent residential mortgages. The liability for off-balance sheet credit exposures increased reflecting the inclusion of lifetime losses for expected funding over the remaining life of the exposures. The allowance for credit losses established on other financial assets was not material. In accordance with the new guidance, we elected the practical expedients to present accrued interest receivables, net of the related allowance for credit losses, in other assets on the consolidated balance sheet and to exclude accrued interest balances from the amortized cost basis for disclosure purposes. For credit card receivables, accrued interest is recognized in the loan balance as it is billed, with the related allowance recorded in the allowance for credit losses on loans.

In conjunction with our adoption of this guidance, we also elected fair value option on certain student loans held for investment and recorded a separate cumulative effect adjustment to write-up these loans to fair value which resulted in an increase in retained earnings of $2 million, after tax, as of January 1, 2020.

•Reference Rate Reform In March 2020, the FASB issued an ASU that provides optional expedients and exceptions to the U.S. GAAP guidance on contract modifications and hedge accounting to ease the financial reporting burdens associated with transitioning away from LIBOR and other interbank offered rates to acceptable alternative rates. Under

the new guidance, an entity is permitted to account for the modification of a contract affected by reference rate reform as a continuation of the existing contract, if certain conditions are met. In addition, the new guidance allows an entity to elect on a hedge-by-hedge basis to continue to apply hedge accounting for hedging relationships in which the critical terms change due to reference rate reform, if certain conditions are met. These optional elections generally will cease to apply after December 31, 2022. We elected to adopt this guidance during the second quarter of 2020, which did not have a material impact on our consolidated financial statements. As permitted under the ASU, we elected to sell all of our LIBOR-linked variable rate held-to-maturity securities maturing beyond 2021 during the second quarter of 2020. See Note 4, "Securities," for further discussion.

There have been no additional accounting pronouncements issued that are expected to have or could have a material impact on our consolidated financial statements.