EIOPA – ComFrame

Gabriel Bernardino, president of EIOPA, expressed his desire for an international insurance market supervisory and legislative body in a speech early this month.

´The insurance market is spreading globally, creating new opportunities, challenges but also risks,´ said Bernardino. Creating a healthy and stable insurance market requires such international cooperation. The best way to ensure financial stability and proper consumer protection is through the development of a global regulatory and supervisory standard.

ComFrame

Efficiency of supervision could improve under ComFrame: Common Framework for the Supervision of Internationally Active Insurance Groups (IAIGs). ComFrame is an integrated, multilateral and multidisciplinary framework for group-wide supervision of international insurance companies, particularly in the area of Solvency II.

To ensure consumer protection at the international level, it is necessary to also improve regulatory capital requirements (Solvency II). This of course takes into account different perspectives and developments worldwide.

Cooperation with regulators at universities would be essential to the IAIG’s approach. Information sharing and cooperation between supervisors would be a defining element of effective supervision.

Mr Bernardino’s plans will require the insurance market to be open to even more structural changes. Besides the changes currently being implemented, the question is whether ComFrame is timely.

In addition, are the possible benefits of an international supervisory and legislative body especially for the DNB and other supervisory bodies (not only in implementing European and International laws and regulations, but also in monitoring them. After all, the capacity problems at the DNB were already present since the advent of Solvency II) or are the benefits also for the insurer and ultimately the policyholder?