Solvency II on hold

Another new legislative proposal that has been pushed on the European Parliament's agenda is the suggested amendment to Solvency II Directive 2009/138/EC from 2009 (through Omnibus II Directive). On the European Commission's website we may still read that the proposed changes are likely to apply as of 1 January 2014. However, the vote in the European Parliament has been delayed by five months until 11 March 2014 and since by then the new European elections would be approaching, the election preparations may further delay the implementation of these rules ("Solvency II kicked into long grass"). The proposed changes were supposed to update the existing rules for the insurance companies regarding their supervision, financial reporting, finance techniques and risk management, among others making sure that consumers are protected due to insurers keeping enough money in reserve, proportionally to the risks they were underwriting. Since insurance companies do not hide their unhappiness with this proposal, on top of the news from the tobacco world, it is not hard to imagine that some heavy lobbying took place also in respect of this proposal to delay its adoption

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