GFIA Global Federation of Insurance Associations

Today, GFIA hosted a regulatory roundtable in Marrakesh, Morocco. This regulatory roundtable had the honour of being held under the High Patronage of His Majesty King Mohammed VI of Morocco.

This prestigious endorsement signifies the mutual interests of the highest level of leadership with the international insurance community. The event featured an exchange of views between various supervisory authorities and representatives from the global insurance industry.

Governor Dirk Kempthorne, GFIA chair, said: "The roundtable today was an excellent example of regulatory representatives and our industry working collaboratively for the benefit of policyholders. We look forward to constructive exchanges such as these in the future."

The event’s theme was the development of a common framework (ComFrame) for the supervision of internationally active insurance groups (IAIGs). A key component of ComFrame is the development of a quantitative risk-based insurance capital standard (ICS), which is intended to be a prudential framework that aims to give a comparable basis for supervision across jurisdictions. Both ComFrame and the ICS are being developed by the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS).

"These measures provide challenges to both the supervisors who are developing them and the industry which is expected to implement them. Given how widely divergent insurance capital regimes are globally, a good first step would be for risk-based, high-quality existing regimes to be recognised as a suitable implementation of the ICS," said Hugh Savill, chair of GFIA’s capital working group.

"Later editions of the ICS can then focus on further convergence,” he added.

The regulatory roundtable — which was moderated by Professor Karel van Hulle of KU Leuven Faculty of Economics and Business Administration — included:

• Gabriel Bernardino, European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority.
• Matt Walker, U.S. Federal Reserve Board.
• Steven Seitz, U.S. Federal Insurance Office.
• Hassan Boubrik, Moroccan Supervisory Authority.
• Takeshi Murata, MS & AD Insurance Group Holdings (Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Company).
• Daniel Rabinowitz, American International Group (AIG).
• Hugh Savill, GFIA capital working group chair.
• Olav Jones, Insurance Europe.

Today also saw the publication of GFIA's 2014-2015 annual report, which is available here.