More than 40 percent of bank and credit union professionals said in a recent survey that financial institutions should begin working on preliminary CECL calculations by the end of next year, the financial information firm Sageworks said this week.

The company said that another 24 percent responded that financial institutions should begin preliminary calculations after 2017, however.

Sageworks conducted the poll last week during a webinar about the current expected credit losses (CECL) model that the Financial Accounting Standards Board is requiring financial institutions to implement by 2020 or 2021. Sageworks said that the majority of the 299 respondents were CFOs and about 30 percent worked in the credit or finance departments of their institution.

The poll asked webinar attendees when institutions should execute preliminary CECL calculations. Thirteen percent of the respondents said they should start CECL calculations as of the fourth quarter this year – one year earlier than the 42 percent of respondents that responded with the fourth quarter of 2017. Additionally, another 21 percent said institutions should begin calculations as early as next year’s first quarter.

“Having good loan-level data that is comparable is what is important,” Sageworks Senior Risk Management Consultant Neekis Hammond said in a statement. “Once you go back far in the portfolio, you’ve got to look at how many risk rating scales have happened, how many portfolio shifts have happened, what have the underwriting standards been, and then ask – is that data still relevant to the portfolio?”

The same poll question was asked at the beginning and end of the webinar, and the answers changed after attendees learned more about the potential models institutions might use to make their CECL calculations. The first time the question was asked, 38 percent said institutions should execute CECL calculations after 2017. That number dropped to 24 percent after the webinar.