Deloitte Survey - cause for alarm?

Deloitte and our friends at the EIU have come together to provide an updated survey on Sol II readiness

I cannot find the actual  publication for the life of me (and I’m normally pretty resourceful!), but it has made pretty big waves in the risk press. While it is only 60 insurers that were polled, there were plenty of stand out stats;

·         Confidence in compliance by 2013 less than 75% for respondents – their views on the industry as a whole were much less generous

·         Almost half think they will restructure (I’m right in thinking this will be a move toward branch structures rather than subsidiaries?)

·         A third of life companies think they will need to launch new products (perhaps a move away from guarantees and options is sensible)

·         Only 52% are in the implementation stage (actually quite startling)

·         Board awareness at 95% of respondents, despite all respondents having submitted budgets (what on earth the boards of the outlying 5% were doing when the invoice was put on the table is beyond me!)

At this juncture, an “unaware” board is criminal – the money committed and the non-negotiable aspect of compliance means they will struggle to make the required governance changes by 2013. More than anything, unless the boards meet more regularly than quarterly, I suspect there won’t be enough time to do the training needed, in particular using ORSA outputs to drive the decision-making process that they are the custodians of.