Recently Adopted Accounting Standards
Income Taxes
White Mountains adopted ASU 2023-09, Income Taxes (Topic 740): Improvements to Income Tax Disclosures (“ASU 2023-09”) effective for its annual disclosures for the year ended December 31, 2025. ASU 2023-09 requires disclosure of disaggregated information about a reporting entity’s effective tax rate reconciliation as well as information on income taxes paid. ASU 2023-09 was adopted retrospectively, including the recasting of previously reported income tax information. See Note 8 — “Income Taxes.”
Recently Issued Accounting Standards
Disaggregation of Income Statement Expenses
In November 2024, the FASB issued ASU 2024-03, Income Statement—Reporting Comprehensive Income—Expense Disaggregation Disclosures (Subtopic 220-40): Disaggregation of Income Statement Expenses (“ASU 2024-03”), which requires additional disclosure of the nature of expenses included in the income statement. ASU 2024-03 requires disclosures about specific types of expenses (i.e., (a) purchases of inventory, (b) employee compensation, (c) depreciation and (d) intangible asset amortization) included in the expense captions presented on the face of the income statement as well as disclosures about selling expenses. ASU 2024-03 does not change the requirements for the presentation of expenses on the income statement. ASU 2024-03 is effective for annual reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2026 and interim reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2027. Early adoption is permitted. Although ASU 2024-03 requires comparative disclosures for all periods presented, reporting entities will be permitted to begin applying the guidance prospectively with the option for retrospective application for all prior periods presented. Accordingly, the new disclosure requirements in ASU 2024-03 are initially required within White Mountains’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ending December 31, 2027. White Mountains is in the process of evaluating the potential impact of adoption on its financial statements.
About New Standards Disclosures
New accounting standards disclosures describe recently adopted pronouncements and those not yet effective, along with management's assessment of their expected impact. This section provides an early warning system for upcoming changes to how a company reports its financial results, often years before the new rules take effect.
Key signals: when management describes a not-yet-adopted standard's impact as "material" or "still being evaluated," it signals potential significant changes to reported metrics upon adoption. Watch for standards that affect a company's core operations — for example, revenue recognition changes for software companies or lease accounting changes for retailers with large store footprints. The transition method chosen (full retrospective versus modified retrospective) affects comparability with prior periods. Companies that delay adoption to the latest permitted date may be struggling with implementation complexity. Compare the disclosed impact assessments against peers in the same industry to gauge whether management's expectations are reasonable.