The CEA, the representative organisation for European insurers and reinsurers has called for further impact analysis of Europe’s insurance regulation standard Solvency II. The CEA announced at the European Commission public hearing that the latest qualitative impact study (QIS4) on Solvency II needs to align more closely with the framework directive published in July 2007. It was felt that QIS4 comes at a “crucial time” in the development of Solvency II, and should address the right issues, propose the correct methods, have an appropriate calibration and provide good guidance to participants. The CEA also called for further detailed discussion and analysis of the capital requirements in the framework itself. The CEA stated that the calculation of the Minimum Capital Requirement (MCR) and the Solvency Capital Requirement (SCR) need to be consistent. The federation welcomed the adoption of the proportionality principle in the proposed directive, which should ensure that companies with the same risk profile are required to meet the same requirements and that only relevant regulation is applied to smaller companies. Strong support was given for the way global insurance groups are to be supervised under current proposals, and the encouragement of joint decision making between supervisory authorities.
