CCIR strategic initiatives

The Canadian Council of Insurance Regulators has published its three-year planning objectives for 2008-2011, among them it listed its strategic initiative including several components.
The first component involves facilitating informed consumer decision-making by:
developing and facilitating the implementation of consumer friendly disclosure documents for individual variable insurance contracts (IVICs) and other insurance products; and
reviewing the use of electronic communications and transactions within the insurance industry to identify and address risks to consumers, regulatory gaps and legislative and regulatory barriers to industry providing products by electronic means.
The second component of the initiative entails facilitating the development and implementation of harmonized regulation by:
identifying issues around sales and claims processes related to incidental selling of insurance and develop and facilitate implementation of solutions to address the issues; and
reviewing the various definitions of terms such as “insurance business,” “solicitation” and “unlicensed insurance” to identify and address risks to consumers, regulatory gaps and legislative and regulatory barriers to industry resulting from differences in definitions.
The third component includes eliminating unnecessary regulatory burden by:
developing and facilitating the implementation of a framework for risk-based market conduct regulation and of a national complaint reporting system;
encouraging industry efforts in the development and implementation of sound governance practices, standards and guidelines; and
undertaking a review of the Power of Attorney and Undertaking (PAU) system.
The final component of the initiative involves actively collaborating with financial services regulators and other stakeholders to respond to changes in the financial marketplace by:
completing the initiatives with the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) and the Joint Forum of Financial Market Regulators to establish improved point of sale disclosure requirements for IVICs and mutual funds and the review of licensing requirements for intermediaries who sell both IVICs and mutual funds;
reviewing, with CISRO, the regulation of managing general agencies, wholesale agencies and insurance adjusters to identify and address risks to consumers, regulatory gaps and legislative and regulatory barriers; and
collaborating with the federal Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions to share information on technical standards and training under the solvency framework, changes in the insurance marketplace, critical emerging issues and cross jurisdictional financial crime and enforcement issues.