Since the System of National Accounts 1993 (1993 SNA) and the fifth edition of the IMF's Balance of Payments Manual (BPM5) were published, knowledge and understanding of financial derivatives instruments have deepened, and prompted the need for a review of the appropriate statistical treatment. In response, the IMF initiated a process of international discussion which resulted in a discussion paper The Statistical Measurement of Financial Derivatives. The main proposal to clarify and revise the 1993 SNA and the BPM5 were approved by the Inter-Secretariat Working Group on National Accounts (ISWGNA) and the IMF Committee on Balance of Payments Statistics in October 1997.

The IMF drafted the revision to the 1993 SNA that arose from the new standards for statistical measurement of financial derivatives. Following the process agreed by the UN Statistical Commission for changing the 1993 SNA, the revision to the 1993 SNA on financial derivatives was approved in February 2000. In March 2000, IMF published The New International Standards for the Statistical Measurement of Financial Derivatives: Changes to the Text of the 1993 SNA, which provides a detailed record of the changes (indicating both the new text and the old deleted text) to the 1993 SNA.

The new statistical treatment of financial derivatives in the BPM5 is detailed in the Financial Derivatives: A Supplement to the Fifth Edition of the Balance of Payments Manual.