Solvency II Directive

The Solvency II Directive (2009/138/EC) is a Directive in European Union law that codifies and harmonises the EU insurance regulation. Primarily this concerns the amount of capital that EU insurance companies must hold to reduce the risk of insolvency.

Following an EU Parliament vote on the Omnibus II Directive on 11 March 2014, Solvency II came into effect on 1 January 2016. This date had been previously pushed back many times.

EU insurance legislation aims to unify a single EU insurance market and enhance consumer protection. The third-generation Insurance Directives established an "EU passport" (single licence) for insurers to operate in all member states if they fulfilled EU conditions. Many member states concluded the EU minima were not enough, and took up their own reforms, which still led to differing regulations, hampering the goal of a single market.

A number of the large Life Insurers in the UK are unhappy with the way the legislation has been developed. In particular, concerns have been publicly expressed over a number of years by the CEO of Prudential, the UK's largest Life Insurance company.

Doubts about the basis of the Solvency II legislation, in particular the enforcement of a market-consistent valuation approach have also been expressed by American subsidiaries of UK parents - the impact of the 'equivalency' requirements are not well understood and there is some concern that the legislation could lead to overseas subsidiaries becoming uncompetitive with local peers, resulting in the need to sell them off, potentially resulting in a 'Fortress Europe'.

Since the initial Solvency I Directive 73/239/EEC was introduced in 1973, more elaborate risk management systems developed. Solvency II reflects new risk management practices to define required capital and manage risk. While the "Solvency I" Directive was aimed at revising and updating the current EU Solvency regime, Solvency II has a much wider scope. A solvency capital requirement may have the following purposes:

Often called "Basel for insurers," Solvency II is somewhat similar to the banking regulations of Basel II. For example, the proposed Solvency II framework has three main areas (pillars):

The pillar 1 framework set out qualitative and quantitative requirements for calculation of technical provisions and Solvency Capital Requirement (SCR) using either a standard formula given by the regulators or an internal model developed by the (re)insurance company. Technical provisions comprise two components: the best estimate of the liabilities (i.e. the central actuarial estimate) plus a risk margin. Technical provisions are intended to represent the current amount the (re)insurance company would have to pay for an immediate transfer of its obligations to a third party.

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