Ensuring that global rules deliver value to policyholders if implemented in Europe
The International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) has for many years been developing a set of Insurance Core Principles (ICPs). The ICPs seek to encourage consistently high supervisory standards in IAIS member jurisdictions. ICPs do not have any legal basis in the EU but, once agreed internationally, European policymakers consider if, and how, they should be incorporated into European regulation. The IAIS has undertaken two major projects in recent years.
IAIS Holistic Framework
The first is the development and implementation of the Holistic Framework, which was adopted in November 2019. Its objective is to provide an international framework for insurance supervisors to support global financial stability through the assessment and mitigation of systemic risk in the global insurance sector. In December 2022, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) agreed to discontinue the annual identification of global systemically important insurers (G-SIIs) and the associated requirements for the G-SIIs on the basis of the first years of implementation of the Holistic Framework.
Insurance Capital Standard (ICS)
Another key — and very ambitious — project is the development of a global insurance capital standard (ICS) to provide a globally comparable, risk-based measure of the capital adequacy of internationally active insurance groups (IAIGs). Insurance Europe supports the ICS project, which needs to lead to a high-quality and robust standard that promotes a sound, global regulatory level playing field. The final ICS has not been agreed. A version 2.0 is currently under a five-year monitoring phase in some jurisdictions to assess how well it works.
Insurance Europe engages with the IAIS, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) and European and non-European policymakers to make sure that any international standards take into account European regulatory developments and insurance markets and help achieve a global level playing field. This is to ensure that, if implemented in Europe, international standards deliver real value for European policyholders and do not lead to excessive costs or unintended consequences.
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