Insurance Europe Welcomes Agreement on ICS Project

A quick update from Insurance Europe for you;

European insurers have welcomed the agreement reached by the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) on its Insurance Capital Standard (ICS) project.

Insurance Europe welcomes the decision, given the ICS shares many of the key building blocks with existing European supervisory regimes, such as market-value balance sheet with key elements to recognise insurers’ long-term nature, risk-based capital requirements and full integration of internal models.After many years of development, the federation calls for assurances that the adoption of the ICS be recognised as the end point of the project, and ICS-related data requests will cease after this year’s monitoring period.

The project has, Insurance Europe argues, achieved a key objective which is to improve national insurance supervisors’ understanding of other existing solvency frameworks. It therefore contributes to ensuring a high-level of customer protection and financial stability globally.Given the high level of consistency with Solvency II – the EU’s prudential framework that governs the insurance industry – which requires higher overall levels of solvency capital, European insurers can already be considered to be meeting the new ICS requirements.

Insurance Europe therefore considers the new rules should have little impact on European insurers.