How should we account for the development costs of an insurance product? Asset or expense?

Question

I work for an insurance company and I'm trying to understand why the development of insurance products are expensed. The insurance product meets the definition of an intangible asset as it's identifiable. The development done on such products often results in products that will bring in future profits to the company.

Answer 1

Insurance product you mean is actually a service (with no physical substance) right? In such a case how do you distinguish the research phase of your product from the development phase? I guess it is not possible to distinguish development phase from the research phase in insurance products.
Note that as per IAS 38.53, If an entity cannot distinguish the research phase of an internal project to create an intangible asset from the development phase, the entity should treat the expenditure for that project as if it were incurred in the research phase only.
And IAS 38.54 says that you must recognize all research costs as an expense.