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12th July 2015

Newslink Trends: Global Insurance Analysis
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This week, Solvency II continued to be a hot topic as the start date gets closer. Sam Woods, executive director of Insurance supervision, Bank of England, provided assurances at an Association of British Insurers(ABI) conference that regulators would not use Solvency II to hike up capital requirements, and would give market players plenty of time to adapt to the new regime. EIOPA, in a flurry of releases, stressed the need for high quality public disclosure under Solvency II and published the second set of draft Technical Implementation Standards and Guidelines. It also began a consultation on a standardised pan-European Personal Pensions Product, reported for the ninth time on cross-border occupational pensions schemes, and also published a Good Practice Report on the transferability of supplementary pension rights. The Financial Conduct Authority(FCA) updated its criteria and process in deciding to refer a firm or individual to its Enforcement Division, and appointed a Director of Supervision-Retail and Authorisations.
The UK Summer Budget by the Chancellor included several changes which affect the insurance market, including a significant increase in Insurance Premium Tax(IPT), to which the ABI and others responded-an appropriate time to welcome two new reports on the UK motor insurance sector from The Innovation Group and Key Note.
BT announced it had entered into a 6-year global communications and network contract with Zurich, and Majesco listed on the New York Stock Exchange. comparethe market.com is working with Cloudera enterprize data hub to derive more value out of customer data, and Corvea chose Xactware's claims estimating solution. Aon Benfield called on the insurance industry to collaborate to innovate across catastrophe models, and G7 leaders have singled out African Risk Capacity as a model to develop catastrophe insurance solutions in vulnerable regions.
EXOR sweetened its offer for PartnerRe who responded by saying it was discussing enhancements of merger terms with AXIS Capital, whilst putting back the date of the shareholders decision meeting by two weeks to the 7th August. The Chinese insurance regulator(CIRC) approved three new online insurers to add to the existing one, Zhong An. RSA is to appeal the Employment Tribunal judgement in favour of its ex Irish ceo, and the Financial Reporting Council(FRC) is to investigate the role of certain of its Members in the claims accounting saga. Three more brokers joined Willis Networks in the UK.
RSA announced a new cfo, and there were appointments at insurance technology specialists RDT and Intellect SEEC.
Articles on the above topics are included in those added to the Insurance Newslink and Financial Newslink global database service on Wednesday and today at www.onlystrategic.com