Financial Instruments Working Group (FIWG)

FIWG Chair 

Peter Drummond is a Senior Project Director in the UKEB Secretariat. He focuses on financial instruments and insurance accounting and led the UKEB’s project to assess IFRS 17 Insurance Contracts against the endorsement criteria set out in UK legislation for the adoption of IFRS for use in the UK.

FIWG Members

Alan Chapman is a Director and Head of Financial Instruments Reporting within Grant Thornton UK LLP. Alan operates within National Assurance Services, which is the firm's national unit responsible for technical expertise in financial reporting and auditing. Alan is a specialist in financial instrument accounting within International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Alan has significant experience in financial instrument accounting, dealing with a large number of complex issues such as financial liability versus equity classification, accounting implications of complex financing structures, complex derivatives and embedded derivatives accounting, debt restructuring and hedge accounting.

Brendan van der Hoek has specialised in financial instrument accounting for more than 20 years. Originally from Perth, Brendan qualified as a chartered accountant while working with Deloitte in Hong Kong and returned to Australia in the mid-nineties to work in the national technical departments of Deloitte and PwC (originally Coopers & Lybrand). In 2002, Brendan moved to London to work in PwC’s Global ACS team. Since leaving the profession in 2004, Brendan worked for 10 years as head of accounting policy at Lloyds Banking Group and in 2014 he moved to Santander UK to lead their technical accounting work including the bank’s implementation of IFRS 9. Brendan chairs UK Finance’s Disclosure Code Working Group and is actively involved with a number of banking industry groups dealing with the consistent application of IFRS 9. Brendan has been a member of The Taskforce on Disclosures about Expected Credit Losses since its inception in 2017 and between 2009 and 2012 he was member of EFRAG’s Financial Instruments Working Group. A member of both the ICAEW and CAANZ, Brendan sits on the ICAEW’s Financial Reporting and Banking Committees.

Fabio Fabiani is a Partner at EY with over 20 years of experience in accounting and reporting matters. He started his career in Italy and has worked in Portugal, Greece and the Netherlands before moving to the UK in 2014, becoming a UK citizen in 2022. He leads the IFRS function for financial services in the UK for EY and his main area of focus is financial instruments accounting. He is the co-chair of the EY’s Financial Instrument Working Group and is also a member of the EY’s Global IFRSs organisation. Fabio is author of numerous EY publications and is a regular presenter at conferences and learning events both in the UK and internationally.

Helen Shaw is a Director in Deloitte’s national office based in London. Helen specialises in financial instruments accounting, with more than 15 years’ experience advising numerous entities across a broad range of industries on both IFRS and UK GAAP. Helen is a member of Deloitte’s Expert Advisory Panel on financial instruments and contributes to Deloitte’s flagship publication ‘iGAAP’.

Kumar Dasgupta is visiting faculty at the Judge Business School, Cambridge, and a specialist consultant with the World Bank on IFRSs. Kumar also works part-time with the IVSC on global valuation standards on financial instruments. Kumar is a chartered accountant and prior to joining Judge Business School Kumar was the Technical Director responsible for the Financial Instruments Standards at the IFRS foundation, the body responsible for setting global accounting standards. Kumar also has considerable experience in the area of accounting practice as partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers. Kumar has a doctorate in Accounting / Regulation and a master’s specialising in quantitative finance from London Business School. Kumar’s research interests are Accounting Standards, the process through which such standards are set, their efficacy and efficiency.

Mark Randall is a UK Chartered accountant with over 25 years’ experience in banking. He works in PwC’s Corporate Reporting Services group based in London, specialising in advising on IFRS financial instruments accounting. He chairs PwC’s global IFRS 9 Classification, Measurement & Impairment working group and is Global Banking industry IFRS co-lead for PwC.

Mark Spencer leads the Financial Services’ Accounting and Corporate Reporting Advisory team for financial services at BDO LLP.  He leads this BDO offering across accounting change, advisory services on the structuring of groups of companies and transactions so as to achieve desired accounting outcomes, the use of financial instruments, ESG and corporate reporting and all other aspects of accounting.  He has 18 years of experience advising and providing assurance to financial institutions and corporates situated in EMEA, the Americas and Asia Pacific.

Richard Crooks is IFRS 17 Technical Lead at Legal & General Group Plc.  With over 20 years’ experience in the life insurance industry, Richard has led Legal & General Group’s contribution to the development of accounting standards and is currently responsible for the Group’s IFRS 17 accounting policies and transition implementation.  Previous roles within Legal & General include as Head of Group Accounting Policy and Head of Group Financial Reporting. Richard is currently a member of the ICAEW Insurance Committee, the European Insurance CFO Forum Steering Committee and was a member of the UK Endorsement Board’s Technical Advisory Group for IFRS 17. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and received both his BSc and PhD from the University of Southampton.

Robbert Labuschagne has over 20 years of experience in IFRS, focusing on financial instruments accounting. While at KPMG Robbert advised clients on IFRS conversions and other financial instrument advisory work. Robbert spent more than 10 years at Barclays as a Director in the Accounting Policy group, where he was responsible for supporting businesses with IFRS compliant transactions, and also ensuring the compliance of Barclays’ accounting policies with IFRS. Robbert is currently a Director in the Citi Accounting Policy group, where he is responsible for IFRS and US GAAP matters.

Sarah Bacon is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, having qualified with Baker Tilly in 2004. She currently works in the Accounting, Regulatory & Valuation Policy team at NatWest Group plc (NWG) a role she has held since 2013. She has held a number of finance roles within the NWG, and before that at Deutsche Bank, and her main work focus is currently in relation to the IFRS accounting for structured transactions involving financial instruments and structured entities.

Stacey Howard is a technical director at KPMG where she has worked throughout her accounting career spanning over 25 years. For the last 14 years she has specialised in financial instrument accounting including hedge accounting. Stacey currently works in KPMG’s accounting and reporting group where she provides guidance to audit teams on both IFRS and local GAAP. Prior to that, she held client-facing roles in banking accounting advisory and in banking audit. Stacey currently leads KPMG’s UK Financial Instrument Topic Team and is also a member of KPMG’s EMA Financial Instrument Topic Team. She is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW) and is a qualified chartered accountant.