Asia-Pacific banks are well-placed to adopt a set of new financial reporting standards that will affect almost all jurisdictions globally according to a new report from S&P Global Ratings.In line with global peers, the Asia-Pacific banks are in the midst of adopting International Financial Reporting Standards 9, or its local equivalent. The new standard revises the requirements for the classification and measurement of financial instruments, the impairment of financial assets, and hedge accounting.One notable exception is Japan, which will allow its banks to continue to report under Japanese GAAP (which incorporates an element of expected credit losses).IFRS 9 was developed in response to criticism that the previous standard (IAS 39) had led to the delayed recognition of credit losses by banks. IT came into force for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2018, and will affect almost all banks in the Asia-Pacific region. Australia's major banks will be among the first to report annual profits under IFRS 9 - with NAB having adopted the new accounting standard from October 2014 onwards. S&P stated that the other majors are "well positioned to meet the IFRS 9 implementation requirements… [as they all] have advanced internal ratings based systems and regulatory approved credit risk models…"Australia and Singapore were singled out by S&P Global as having the most benign business environments in the region, and therefore the least likely to see disruption to financial reporting once IFRS 9 starts - and in any case will be able to run dual reporting systems as part of the changeover.Nevertheless, earlier recognition of credit losses will see an initial increase in provisioning among all Australia's banks, including the mutual sector, and will remain more volatile than under the present financial reporting standards, according to the S&P Global report.In the short term, the major banks will see less effect than the regionals and the mutual banks. Longer term, loans to cyclical industries such as mining may need to be revisited, noted S&P.