The International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) completed its first step in process to develop group-wide global insurance capital standards during its conference in Amsterdam. This week it announced that it had concluded development of the first-ever global insurance capital standard – Basic Capital Requirements (BCR) for global systemically important insurers (G-SIIs).
The BCR has also been endorsed by the G-20’s own Financial Stability Board (FSB).
“With design of the BCR now complete the IAIS has concluded the first of several steps in its process to develop group-wide global insurance capital standards,” said Peter Braumüller, chair of the IAIS Executive Committee, which also includes Federal Insurance Office (FIO) Director Michael McRaith, a Treasury official, and two U.S. state regulators.
Treasury and the Federal reserve Board as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission sit on the international FSB.
This comes as expected–now it is up to the countries to absorb it or otherwise fit it into their regulatory methodologies.
In the U.S., that means the primary regulator, whether the states or the Fed, depending on whether the insurer owns a thrift/savings & loan has been deemed a systemically important financial institution subject to enhanced prudential regulation.
The adoption in whole or part should be interesting as not all U.S. attendees appear to be on the same page, although some would wish it so.
McRaith, according to those live-tweeting the event at #iais2014 (let’s be clear; this blogger could not attend and turned to social media and attendee feedback) apparently said on a panel on capital standards that there was “a great desire” to move forward with them as long as “no one has to change.”
McRaith also called the BCR development a significant milestone as it is the first ever group capital standard, according to Tweets from attendees. He also focused on the importance of the globalized insurance markets and also noted, according to Tweets, that he was not worried about a monoculture developing with this capital standard.
The IAIS is developing no less than three separate capital standards for SIFIs: the BCR and the higher loss absorption (HLA) for G-SIIs, and the Insurance Capital Standard (ICS) for Internationally Active Insurance Groups (IAIGs.)
The BCR will serve as the comparable foundation for the HLA. Together, BCR and HLA will provide a consolidated group-wide capital requirement that will apply to G-SIIs only. When the ICS is finalized, it will replace the BCR in its role as the foundation for HLA. Got it?
The ICS is expected to be adopted in late 2018 and the HLA from 2019 onward, initially based on BCR as a foundation, moving later to ICS.
From 2019, G-SIIs will be required to hold capital no lower than the BCR plus HLA.
Missouri Insurance Director John M. Huff, in his keynote address,speaking on behalf of the NAIC, notably wavered from the perceived absolutism of a capital principle. He called upon global regulators to “acknowledge that our approaches to capital can be very different.”
Huff called upon the global community to give jurisdictions time needed to “develop standards appropriate to the insurance industry, and resist the pressure to homogenize regulation to treat all products and all investments the same.”
“In the U.S. as an example, with the exception of SIFIs, … the goal of the insurance capital requirements is not to prevent failure of a firm but to ensure the impact to policyholders is minimized. In other words, firms are allowed to fail but policyholders still need to be protected,” Huff stated.
He cautioned that if regulators require too much capital, then prices for consumers go up.
“A delicate balance needs to be achieved, and we must leverage other supervisory powers to complement capital such that we do not become over reliant on it,” Huff stated.
McRaith did acknowledge that a wide variety of views must be taken into account in development of global standards, according to a Tweet from an IAIS official.
Huff partially echoed that sentiment in his remarks: “When it comes to core principles, let’s truly make them principles where there is broad agreement they are critical to policyholder protection …true international norms that individual members can implement in a way appropriate for their home jurisdiction.”
“When it comes to the capital requirements, …we need to recognize that given the timelines, we need to work with present supervisory systems rather than thinking such standards could be used to dramatically reshape those established under existing law. As we move forward on these issues, practical and implementable change will be evolutionary, not revolutionary,” Huff stated.
Based on end-2013 data received during field testing, the average level of the BCR is 75% of the reported jurisdictional group-wide Prescribed Capital Requirement for G-SIIs, and 67% for all 2014 field testing volunteers, the IAIS stated.
Beginning in 2015, the BCR will be reported on a confidential basis to group-wide supervisors and be shared with the IAIS for purposes of refining the BCR.
The development of HLA requirements to apply to G-SIIs is due to be completed by the end of 2015. The final step is the development of a risk-based group-wide global ICS, due t by the end of 2016 and applied to IAIGs from 2019.
BCR is calculated on a consolidated group-wide basis for all financial and material non-financial activities. It is determined using a “factor-based” approach with 15 factors applying to defined segments and their specified exposure measures within the main categories of a G-SII’s activity – traditional life insurance, traditional non-life insurance, non-traditional insurance, assets and non-insurance.
All holding companies, insurance legal entities, banking legal entities and any other companies in the group will be included in the consolidation.
For more information, see PDFs on the iAIS website here.
Tag: ACLI
MetLife receives preliminary SIFI designation from FSOC
Washington, Sept. 4 — After more than a year of review, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) voted today to preliminarily designate MetLife, the country’s largest life insurer, a nonbank systemically risky financial institution or SIFI, and the insurer said it is weighing its options.
The Council’s vote was unanimous with one member voting present. AIG, when it was designated, had an unanimous vote. Prudential Financial’s final designation vote was 7-2, with an abstention from the new SEC chairwoman.
“MetLife strongly disagrees with the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s preliminary designation of MetLife as a SIFI,” stated after the vote.
“MetLife is not systemically important under the Dodd-Frank Act criteria. In fact, MetLife has served as a source of financial strength and stability during times of economic distress, including the 2008 financial crisis,”MetLife CEO Steven Kandarian continued in a prepared statement this afternoon.
The preliminary designation came in a closed meeting of the FSOC, over which U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew presides.
Kandarian said that MetLife is not ruling out any of the available remedies under Dodd-Frank to contest a SIFI designation.
Prudential Financial appealed the decision last year by the FSOC and lost but did not pursue the matter through the court system.
MetLife now has 30 days to request a hearing before the Council to contest the proposed determination. After any hearing, the Council may make a final determination regarding the company.
FSOC does not intend to publicly announce the name of any nonbank financial company that is under evaluation before a final determination is made.
Instead, MetLife did the talking today: “The current regulatory system oversees a stable industry that pays out more than $500 billion every year. Imposing bank-centric capital rules on life insurance companies will make it more difficult for Americans to buy products that help protect their financial futures. At a time when government social safety nets are under increasing pressure and corporate pensions are disappearing, the goal of public policy should be to preserve and encourage competitively priced financial protection for consumers,” Kandarian stated.
If assets are treated as short-term under accounting or capital rules, then insurers will not be there to buffer the risk they have taken on with huge pension plans, insurers have argued.
When and if New York-based MetLife is formally designated, it would be subject to enhanced prudential supervision from what (again) will be its primary regulatory Federal Reserve Board, with a host of accompanying holding company oversight and capital standards, a yet to be worked out by the Fed.
The vote by the 10-member Council would not mean a proposed SIFI designation is official until MetLife is given a chance to respond, which may mean it decides to appeal or does nothing and the time-frame to respond elapses.
However, the most interesting part of MetLife’s potential designation will be the rationale used by FSOC. For example, for Prudential, last year, the FSOC majority started with the premise of an impaired insurer, with a run on the bank scenario, that many in the insurance industry–and the independent insurance expert, Roy Woodall, thought was implausible, according to his dissent.
Last year, FSOC determined that Prudential’s material financial distress could pose a threat to financial stability focusing on two of the channels: exposure and asset liquidation.
“The Council has based its conclusion solely on what is referred to as the First Determination Standard; namely: ‘material financial distress at the nonbank financial company could pose a threat to the financial stability of the United States,'” Woodall stated in his dissent.
Under Dodd Frank regulations, FSOC can, but does not require, that it begin with the company in distress and make determinations from there.
Passing that up brings the Second Determination Standard, dealing with the activities of an institution, into play.
“Given the questionable and unreasonable basis for the Council’s reliance solely on the First Determination Standard, it is my position that it would have been prudent for the Council also to have considered the Second Determination Standard pertaining to activities,” Woodall stated in the Prudential dissent of September 2013.
The fact that there were no dissents today–a ‘present’ vote is not a dissent–it appears the FSOC COULD have used the second determination route with MetLife.
Reaction from the Hill will certainly come, as some concerned lawmakers there have been attempting to stop FSOC in its tracks and have it reconsider SIFI designations until there is further disclosure on proceedings.
Rep. John K. Delaney, D-Md., a member of the House Committee on Financial Services,stated he had concerns about the process behind the MetLife designation, particularly regarding an alleged lack of communication and transparency.
“I generally support FSOC and its goals, but believe the details can be improved,” said Delaney, who, in July introduced with Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Fla., the FSOC Improvement Act (H.R. 5180) to address concerns about lack of transparency in the SIFI designation process.
MetLife, like its insurance SIFI brethren AIG and Prudential, is already designated as a global systemically important insurer (G-SII) by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS), which is expecting to designate any global reinsurers it deems systemically risky this November.
MetLife has been regulated by the Fed before, back when it owned a bank. MetLife debanked in early 2013 in part to get out from under the Fed’s Tier One capital-focused oversight, where it was subject to stress tests it believed befit banks, not insurers.
Insurance trades were having none of what the FSOC delivered today.
The American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI) said it “is extremely disappointed” by the designation today of another life insurance company, MetLife, as a SIFI.
“No single life insurer poses a systemic risk to the U.S.economy,” it simply stated.
For its part, he Property Casualty Insurance Association of America (PCI)’s Robert Gordon, senior vice president, policy development and research, stated that “while a particular combination of facts, including the performance of non-insurance activities, may trigger a determination of systemic risk for an institution, such a determination does not alter the fact that property and casualty and other traditional insurance activities do not give rise to systemic risk.”
Rep. Scott Garrett, R-NJ), chairman of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government-Sponsored Enterprises, who once tried to gain entry to a closed FSOC meeting, let loose on the preliminary decision: “Today’s irresponsible and inappropriate designation of another U.S. business as too-big-to-fail only strengthens my resolve to reform the out-of-control FSOC….This designation flies in the face of a unanimous, bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives to postpone any additional designations,” he said.
Garret and others have been engaged in a flurry of letter-writing over the past months to get answers from Lew and FSOC.
IAIS proposing removing ‘observer’ groups, adding public forum and phone time
UPDATE with NAIC consumer rep comment
July 31, Washington—In a move that had been anticipated by some for awhile, the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) told members and observers that it is proposing the elimination of “observer” status. If this proposal becomes policy, it would go into effect January 2015.
Comments on the proposal, which is expected to become public Aug. 4, will be due on Sept. 2.
The IAIS, which did not confirm this action or timeline. It has been developing and weighing new processes for participation by interested parties for some time and will continue to do so.
Some groups have in the past been vocal about their criticism of the move toward what they feel has been a trend at the IAIS toward less transparency and more closed meetings. Observers say the policy will definitely change the dynamics of interaction with the IAIS at a critical time.
A global insurance capital standard is in the works by 2016 for globally active insurance groups, with implementation by 2019, alongside the continued development of capital standards for global systemically important insurers (G-SIIs) and possibly for global reinsurers.
The IAIS is also developing basic capital requirements (BCRs), which are planned to be finalized this year for implementation by global systemically important insurers (G-SIIs.) BCRs will serve as the foundation for higher loss absorbency (HLA) requirements for G-SIIs, and it is anticipated that their development and testing will also inform development of the ICS, the IAIS stated last year.
“You are talking about very complex issues here –the idea that they are decided in closed sessions is absurd….Corporate governance now being thrown out the window–they spend 10 years opening up these meetings, and now with the flick of a switch they are going to close them,” one industry executive noted. “Why is it that the public that is most effected by this have little time…less than a month… to comment?”
Also, recently, there are some key observers who just got their ‘wings.” The latest inductees into the observer ranks had strongly pushed for inclusion–namely, consumer groups and the independent insurance member of the U.S. Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC.)
Peter Kochenburger, one of six National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) consumer representatives designated for IAIS observer participation was worried about the effect of any new policy after consumers had just gotten their foot in the door.
Unlike big insurance companies, the consumer advocates are less well known and could have really benefitted from face-time with their counterparts from different countries as well as from having an audience with international regulators, he noted. He expressed concern that eliminating observer status will reduce the effectiveness of consumers’ participation although that is not the intent of the new proposal.
Kochenburger, a University of Connecticut law professor and executive director of the law school’s insurance law center, says he thinks communicating only via e-mail, conferences calls and the like does not enhance understanding and developing trust (if not agreement) between the parties. However, he noted, consumer groups will always be very strapped for paying for travel (despite funding up to a point by NAIC) and always vastly outnumbered by the industry in public live meetings so the proposed this emphasis on written communication/comments could help level the playing field a bit. He also supported the IAIS intention of setting out specific processes and timelines for stakeholder participation, and welcomed written participation.
Roy Woodall, the appointed independent insurance expert and insurance voting member at FSOC, gained observer status this winter after trying for more than a year and half to become part of the proceedings. Woodall had publicly expressed strong concern in Congressional hearings about not having access to important regulatory discussions on financial stability of insurers in the FSOC’s wheelhouse when associates at NGOs and other service-oriented organizations could join the top-level discussions.
The Federal Reserve Board, also an FSOC member, was approved for membership –more than observer status-in the fall of 2013. The Federal Insurance Office is also a member.
Observers pay a flat fee of $19,000 Swiss Frances (CHF). A 2013 IAIS list denotes 144 observers for a possible total of 2.736 million CHF which is over $3 million US dollars.
Members pay quite a bit more. Total such fees for 2013 were 3,848,900 CHF or $4.237 million converted today. The NAIC pays a hefty 317,000 CHF, or almost $350,000, dwarfing the fees of any other member. They also bring more people to the table.
The Federal Insurance Office fee is $14,100 CHF and the UK, Canada, the Netherlands and Bermuda have a membership fee of 67,000 CHF, the top fee among most other global jurisdictions.
It is thought that the Financial Stability Board (FSB) could help fund the difference if and when Observers are dropped from membership, although no one is publicly discussing options.
IAIS observers include in the United States as of 2013: ACE, INA Holdings Inc ., ACORD
AFLAC, AM Best, American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI,) American Insurance Association(AIA), AIG, Assured Guaranty Municipal Corp., Barnert Global Ltd., Cigna International Corp. CNA Insurance, Deloitte LLP, DLA Piper, LLP, Duane Morris LLP, Examination Resources LLC, Genworth Financial, Liberty Mutual Group, MassMutual Financial Group, MetLife, New York Life International, Northwestern Mutual, Promontory Financial Group, LLC, Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI), Prudential Financial Inc, Reinsurance Association of America USA, Starr International USA Inc., The Chubb Corp., Transatlantic Reinsurance Co., Travelers Companies, Inc., Treliant Risk Advisers, United Health Group and XL Group.
The NAIC consumer representatives, as noted, and international organizations such as the International Actuarial Association, the World Federation of Insurance Intermediaries and Insurance Europe are also observers.
Moveable feasts of TRIA & insurer capital await House calendar after Senate victories
Two pieces of legislation atop many U.S. insurers’ wish-list celebrated success in the Senate June 3 and could find themselves part and parcel of a larger bill in conference if companion legislation moves forward in the House.
The Senate Banking Committee passed the Terrorism Risk Insurance Association’s (TRIA) reauthorization Tuesday 22-0, the first such movement of any TRIA reauthorization legislation this year. The House course of action on TRIA is widely said to be caught up in House Financial Service Committee leadership concerns.
Also Tuesday, the full Senate approved legislation (S. 2270) that would allow the Federal Reserve Board’s flexibility to develop insurance-based capital standards for insurance companies under its supervision.
Basically, the bill would temper the effects of the Dodd-Frank Act’s seemingly watertight Collins Amendment on development of capital standards for systemically important insurers, thrift/ savings & loan holding companies (SLHC’s) and any future insurance company that would or could come under the Fed’s purview.
Although the House has not forged legislation yet on TRIA, it is the centerpiece of any insurance potential lawmaking this year, so many say it could carry along any Dodd-Frank fixes with it once (and whether) it climbs through both chambers of Congress.
Housing and Insurance Subcommittee Chairman Randy Neugebauer, R-Tex., is expected to soon introduce the House`s TRIA reauthorization bill, according to the property casualty insurance lobby. Although a slim reauthorization package has been suggested, and insurers clamor for broader cushions, some compromise action is anticipated, as urgency among insurers grows.
Earlier this year, the Fed temporarily exempted life insurers from bank-centric rules while it explored capital standard options for life insurers. Fed officials have testified or shared that the Collins Amendment, or Section 171, gives them little flexibility to exempt or change life insurers from strict minimum capital standards intended for banks.
S. 2270 is designed to give the Fed the ability to develop insurance-specific standards for insurance companies as it moves forward.
In the House, there is legislation, although it hasn’t gotten the ride it has in the Senate. Gary Miller, R-Calif. and Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., and 51 cosponsors are pushing for H.R. 4510.
The American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI) says rules governing life insurers on all issues must be appropriate for life insurers. “There is broad agreement on this position. The Obama administration, Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate, state and federal regulators and private industry all agree that life insurers should not be subject to capital standards more suited for the business of banking,” the ACLI stated yesterday.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, author of the Collins Amendment, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., for introduced S. 2270.
Swinging back to TRIA, the American Insurance Association (AIA) says it is confident that TRIA will be reauthorized in 2014 with strong bi-partisan support.”
“The program maximizes private market risk bearing while protecting taxpayers at every step. By placing the financial recovery on the private market in all but the most catastrophic of attacks, TRIA protects the federal government and taxpayers from this potential exposure,” the AIA stated.
For a comprehensive overview of TRIA authorization history, see http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/terror/R42716.pdf TRIA was reauthorized in 2005 and 2007 after its first authorization in 20002 in response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist acts.
WASHINGTON INSURANCE RIDER 