EIOPA Conference in Frankfurt - "The authenticity of hopelessness"

"What do we want?" - "SOLVENCY II"
"When do we want it?" - "WHENEVER!"

...or so goes the leitmotif of today's EIOPA conference in Frankfurt, attended by the great and good from EIOPA, the Commission and various regulatory/lobbying bodies - ably tweeted by DIMA and Mr Varnell.

Sr. Bernadino's early morning speech covers the IORP issue as well as pure Solvency II, and tells us;

• Politicial institutions should commit to Solvency II
• All need to agree on "sound and prudent regime" for valuing long-term guarantees - EIOPA hoping to receive a clear mandate "as soon as possible", which is not promising for outcome delivery to a March 2013 plenary session!
• Regardless of how long we stretch out to for full go-live ("not earlier than 2016" is his indication in the speech, rather than a fait accompli), EIOPA will look to co-ordinate early implementation of Pillar 2 and Pillar 3 elements based on their existing powers. Not certain if that means "existing" anticipates including or excluding the Omnibus II changes though.

Interestingly, on the same day our pals at Bloomberg produced this tidy summary of piecemeal introduction of elements of Pillars 2 and 3 which touches on some of the elements from my blog post the other week - particularly like Oliver Bate's "Balkanisation" comment!

Since Bernadino's speech the tweetosphere has been full of comment from the Montalvos/Van Hulles/Creedons etc around the practicalities of Pillar 1 parallel running, leading or following IAIS developments in insurance regulation, and ORSA - get stuck in on the #EIOPA2012 hashtag!

ABI Conference this week - who's off the Christmas card list?

I had a look through the ABI agenda for their meeting later this week (sadly won't be going). I may be missing something, but it appears that everyone got an invite except for someone from the EU Parliament.

A deliberate snub, or was rapporteur Balz or one of his lieutenants not available to ensure that at least one representative from each of the trialogue parties was present?

EIOPA 1st Annual Conference - Anything of note?

EIOPA had their first annual conference today in Frankfurt (happy birthday!). Looks very heavy on politicos as you might expect, and there has been a few drips of information from it, in particular;

• Sr Bernadino's comments that insurers should not "pretend to play God" by implementing onerous counter-cyclical tools in addition to the facilities already in play to avoid pro-cyclicality
• Mr Barnier's introductory speech where the delay to 2014 is seen as "a plus point, enabling insurers, national supervisors and EIOPA to prepare better"- doubtless all you project managers looking at an additional year of expense will rest easy at that! He also mentions that equivalence is not looking to force countries to adopt a regime identical to Solvency II, as well as emphasising the party line on Group supervision in the context of IAIS ICPs and the ongoing SIFI debate.
• Sr Bernadino's keynote speech - May 2012 scheduled for public consultation on technical standards, which he stresses does not pre-empt the trialogues and Rapporteur Balz's Omnibus II paper going through EU parliament
• Elliot Varnell has had a busy day tweeting, so serve yourself at his feed. Interesting to see that Karel van Hulle thinks there isn't enough cross-border sales going on - having worked in that area, a good helping hand might be to remove local language requirements!

FERMA Risk Conference - various content

Seems to be a good amount of debate and activity over in Stockholm for the FERMA conference - I heartily recommend the blog.

So far the VP of FERMA has blown FERMA's trumpet, a futurologist (now there's a profession!)recommends looking out for "ninja" trends whilst referring to risk professionals as "sexy magician types", and the head of an enormous German bank telling us that "risk management deficiencies" were at the heart of the financial crisis (as opposed to avaricious bankers). The phrase schadensh*zen springs immediately to mind...

In addition, there was a nice piece on Captives under Solvency II (I liked the parallel between a tightening reinsurance market alongside the expense of allocating additional capital to captive vehicles looking like a double-whammy), and FERMA's VP in the action again recommending that the risk profession engages in some 'upskilling' in order to be engaged more fully with the board, noting "It is all about talking the language of the board...and that is financials".

I wouldn't agree with that, but I appreciate the sentiment in the context of the actuarial professions' upskilling exercises with the CRO/Head of Risk Function role in mind.