Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
March 10, 2006 at 06:28 AM
NAICEditorialMarch10jc
94 lines
The appearance of 2 leading regulators in the European Union at the regulators’ table during the NAIC’s spring meeting was instructive not only for the update on the financial services framework that is under construction in Europe but also as a barometer for the real day-to-day impact it will have on the domestic market.
The Disney World venue sorely tempts one to use an “It’s a Small World” analogy to what is going on in the insurance business. But this is no animated song and dance number. Rather it will have a real, measurable impact on the domestic U.S. insurance industry.
When Karel Van Hulle, head of the European Commission’s insurance and pensions, financial institutions, and, Alberto Corinti, secretary general of the Committee of European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Supervisors spoke some pretty weighty regulatory points surfaced.
To name a few: new solvency standards, risk assessments from modeling that will use capital more efficiently, and greater regulatory responsibility that comes with internal modeling that better assesses risk.
If this sounds familiar, perhaps it is because these issues are being discussed as domestic regulators, insurers and actuaries are assiduously pursuing their own regulatory construction project, principle-based reserving.
While some of the EU efforts will not be complete until around 2010, when it is done companies operating outside of the U.S. will have to comply with these new standards as well as U.S. regulation.
For instance, Steve Broadie of the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America noted that as international and U.S. accounting standards meld, it is likely that statutory accounting will change along with U.S. GAAP.
And the American Insurance Association’s Dave Snyder noted concern over the workability of fair value accounting on U.S. property-casualty insurers if it ends up being incorporated into the EU effort. “The business is so complicated and the risks are so uncertain that standard templates from other industries may not fit easily.”
Doug Barnert, president of Barnert Global and executive director of the Group of North American Insurance Enterprises, offers an example. When IASC standards for Hong Kong were implemented every U.S. company with a subsidiary there had to comply with these standards. The same thing will happen as capital adequacy standards are developed, he adds.
