More than a third of bank and credit union executives said they felt comfortable with forecasting economic projections 12 months into the future in anticipation of FASB’s coming CECL rule, Sageworks recently said.

The financial information company drew that conclusion from a poll it conducted during a recent webinar on preparing for the current expected credit losses model, also known as CECL.

Sageworks asked its webinar participants, “How far out would you be confident in your institution’s most qualified person accepting or rejecting an economic projection, if your job depended on their being right more often than not?” Thirty-five percent of respondents indicated they would be comfortable with qualified professionals making economic projections 12 months out, Sageworks said. Another 19 percent said they would be comfortable with economic projections being made six months out.

“A common misconception arising from the forecasting component of the FASB’s CECL standard is that forecasting will be required over the term or expected life of a loan pool; the standard instead applies a somewhat circular definition of ‘reasonable and supportable’ for application of forecasting periods,” Garver Moore, principal of Sageworks Advisory Services, said in a statement.  “In other words, you should apply forecasting adjustments for periods that you can reasonably and supportably forecast, and you should not apply adjustments for periods where you cannot reasonably and supportably forecast. A common question in the market is ‘How long is that?’”

Sageworks said that it had more than 340 responses during that poll from bank and credit union presidents, directors, chief financial officers and vice presidents. More than a quarter of those (26 percent) said they are not currently performing economic projections. Just 10 percent said they would be confident accepting or rejecting economic projections 18 months out, and another 10 percent indicated 24 months or more.