G20 Leaders Urged to Harmonize Insurance Regulation

Insurance associations from around the world-including the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC)-want leaders meeting at this week’s G20 Summit to consider internationally harmonized regulation for an increasingly global insurance system.

The IBC and the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association are among insurance groups from Europe, Bermuda and the U.S. calling for insurance-specific solutions to the financial issues on the table during the April 2 summit. “It is … important that solutions devised to solve problems in the banking industry are not automatically applied to insurance,” the group notes in a March 27 letter to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The insurers want regulators to take a risk-based approach to supervising insurers and adopt an international approach to monitoring them. “The inconsistency of having a globalized insurance industry on the one hand and a ‘siloed’ national approach to regulation on the other must be reconciled,” the letter states. “Fragmented regulatory structures around the globe need to be overhauled to prevent regulatory protectionism, just as regulatory bodies need to co-operate, and regulatory practices need to converge.”

The group also wants the G20 leaders to expand the discussions to include private retirement savings and to address growing trade protectionism.

This story was originally published by Canadian Insurance Top Broker.