Solvency II has been gold plated in their market as supervisors impose additional last minute requirements, according to 68 percent of respondents to an Insurance Europe survey.
The survey, which was carried out in November and covered companies that account for 92 percent of European insurance premiums, revealed an almost threefold increase from a previous survey carried out in June, which found approximately 25 percent of member states were augmenting Solvency II requirements.
The survey also revealed that the number of respondents whose supervisor was interpreting Solvency II in a conservative way has also increased, up from 39 percent in June to 47 percent in November.
Despite all of these challenges, the survey did confirm that the vast majority of Europe’s insurers would be ready to operate under Solvency II from January 2016.
Igotz Aubin, head of prudential regulation at Insurance Europe, commented: “These additional requirements and conservative interpretations come at an extremely challenging time for the industry. This is further compounded by the fact that the final quantitative reporting templates have only just been adopted by the European Commission, meaning insurers only recently received clarity on reporting requirements.”
The survey did, however, find a wide range of areas that respondents believed had seen improvement due to Solvency II.
Some 79 percent of respondents said that governance had improved, while 74 percent reported that risk monitoring and identification processes had been enhanced and 63 percent felt that data quality had increased.
