IAIS SecGen Discusses ICS 2.0 Timeline

The International Association of Insurance Supervisors released its May, 2019, Newsletter today, which was led by a piece from the Secretary-General, Jonathan Dixon:

Our committee meetings next month in Buenos Aires mark an important point in the IAIS’ journey to a global Insurance Capital Standard (ICS). The IAIS embarked on the development of the ICS to create a common language
for supervisory discussions of group solvency of internationally active insurance groups. In June, the focus of our committee discussions will shift from design to implementation issues.

The final round of field testing is now underway, with data due at the end of July. While some ICS design elements remain to be finalised this year, the IAIS remains committed to resolving those elements and beginning the monitoring period in 2020, while recognising that the ICS will continue to evolve during this period. This includes possible refinements and corrections of major flaws or unintended consequences identified during the monitoring period.

In June, we will discuss the overall framework for the monitoring period, including confidentiality safeguards around disclosure of the ICS results and modalities for considering unintended consequences, given that our intention has always been to undertake this work once the ICS is sufficiently developed. We will also further our discussions on the timelines, process and governance for developing comparability criteria and completing the comparability assessment of other solvency regimes relative to the ICS.

As we move towards November and the adoption of ICS Version 2.0 for the monitoring period, we will continue our constructive engagement with stakeholders in order to ensure that there is greater clarity on the process for finalising and implementing the ICS.

This is all consistent with previous schedules provided for ICS 2.0, which include the IAIS deliberations regarding the definition of Insurance company Tier 1 Limited Capital (which includes preferred shares); I take the view that rules comparable, if not identical to the bank NVCC rules will be imposed by OSFI at some point in the future.

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