Who are the standards for?

The Foreword to the IVS states that the primary objective of the IVSC is to “… build confidence and public trust in valuation by producing transparent and consistent standards and securing their universal adoption and implementation for the valuation of assets across the world.” 

To achieve this the standards need to be clear that they are written for the benefit of those who commission and rely on valuations at least as much as for those who provide them.   The best known and most widely adopted international standards in the financial world are the IFRS.  These specify what should included in financial statements, not who should prepare them nor how they should be audited.  Those are matters left to the regulators and accounting professional bodies.

The IVSC recognised in the 2000s that it needed to move from being a body representing professional organisations involved in valuation to one that was inclusive of those who rely on valuations and those who regulate financial markets.  Following a restructuring in 2007 overall management was made the responsibility of Board of Trustees, members of which were mainly drawn from outside the valuation profession and with wider experience of the financial markets that relied on valuation.  They then appointed a Standards Board that included valuers and users, and which were not delegates of valuation professional organisations.  To achieve the required inclusivity the first few editions of the IVS produced after the restructuring did not give instructions to “the valuer” but  instead stated what the valuation process should be from commissioning to completion. 

Instead of progressing this model, recent editions of the IVS have reverted to instructing the valuer what they must do or should do.  This again gives the impression that the IVSC is a supra-national regulator of the valuation profession rather than one that is inclusive of those who rely on valuations or those who regulate them.  We believe this is a mistake.

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