News

With the Society’s assistance, the Central Bank of Ireland held a number of QIS 5 workshops in September, to aid companies in understanding the requirements of QIS 5 and completing the associated spreadsheets.  The workshops were aimed at all professionals involved in completing QIS 5.  They tried to address issues that firms had initially encountered and identified with the technical specification and spreadsheets.

CEIOPS publishes the main spreadsheet to be used by solo undertakings and groups to complete their QIS5 submission due for end-October 2010 (solo) and mid-November 2010 (groups).

The Financial Regulator has issued the first edition of their Solvency II Newsletters, which they plan to issue on a quarterly basis.  The newsletter is intended to keep insurance and reinsurance undertakings informed and up-to-date on Solvency II policy developments, implementation activities and events.

CEIOPS have to-day (11 August 2010) issued an errata list for the QIS5 technical specifications, and an updated Q & A document. 

Solvency II – QIS 5 Workshops

The Society of Actuaries in Ireland and the Financial Regulator are currently organising a series of workshops in September on QIS 5 (Qu

CEIOPS and the Groupe Consultatif have assembled a programme for a hands‐on practical workshop on QIS5 to be held at the CEIOPS office in Frankfurt on 25th and 26th August.  The outline programme has been designed such that the first day should suffice for general insurance actuaries while the second day will address specialised life (with‐profits) issues.  Participants may register for each day separately.

The Groupe Consultatif has submitted comments on the draft QIS 5 technical specification to the European Commission.

The paper identifies a number of high-level issues:

The CEA, CRO Forum and CFO Forum have written to the European Commission to comment on the application of the illiquidity premium to liabilities in both the implementing measures for Solvency II and the fifth quantitative impact study (QIS 5). Welcoming the EC’s more granular approach to the application of the illiquidity premium, the paper sets out proposals for criteria to be tested in QIS 5.

Last month, the Financial Regulator issued a questionnaire to insurance undertakings that had expressed a wish to enter into the Solvency II internal model pre-application readiness assessment process.   

This month, the Financial Regulator held a number of workshops to discuss the questionnaire.

The Financial Regulator has now published a document that sets out the questionnaire together with the main questions raised in the workshops and the Financial Regulator's responses to these questions.

The Management Board of the UK Actuarial Profession has identified enterprise risk management (ERM) as an area of growth, particularly within the financial sector.

The Financial Regulator has published a consultation paper on "Corporate Governance Requirements for Credit Institutions and Insurance Undertakings".

The paper attempts to align corporate governance requirements with recent international regulatory initiatives in the governance field and proposes minimum standards that credit institutions and insurance undertakings will be expected to meet in this area.

In an address to a Financial Regulator Solvency II Insurance Forum this week, Jonathan McMahon, Assistant Director General, Financial Institutions Supervision, urged companies to allocate significant resources to the implementation of Pillar 2 (risk management and governance) and Pillar 3 (supervisor reporting and disclosure) of the Solvency II framework.  He commented that the implementation of Basel II (The Capital Requirements Directive) led banks and regulators to place too much importance on models and their outputs.  He stressed that, while high quality models are important,