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October 15, 2007 at 01:28 PM
Officials and insurance company executives from around the world are heading to Florida this week to catch some rays and talk about the future of insurance regulation.
The International Association of Insurance Supervisors, Basel, Switzerland, will start its 3-day annual conference Tuesday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a city that may be best known for its appeal to college students on spring break.
The IAIS will be offering programming designed to appeal to a different clientele, such as a session on promoting sound insurance markets that will feature luminaries such as Roger Ferguson, chairman of Swiss Re America Holding Corp., Armonk, N.Y., and Nobuyoshi Chihara of the Financial Services Agency in Japan.
A session on creating supervisory and regulatory capacity for the insurance industries in emergency economies is expected to include panelists from regulatory agencies in Argentina, Bermuda, Chile and Mexico as well as from the World Bank, Washington.
The IAIS itself has given the conference the theme “a global climate for change,” to reflect the many varied issues facing IAIS members in countries throughout the world.
“Globalization, economic uncertainty, climate change and financial innovation, to name a few, all reinforce the need for supervisors to work together to develop consistent standards and reach out to emerging markets, IAIS Executive Committee Chair Michel Flam?e says in a statement about the conference.
One session of special interest to U.S. regulators, and regulated entities, may be a panel discussion on the kind of “principles-based” supervision that has taken root in the United Kingdom.
One topic at that session will be the European Union’s Solvency II accounting update initiative, according to the program notes.
Speakers will talk about Solvency II as a “drive of adjustments in the supervisory culture,” the IAIS says.
