Since Karen Monks and I held our webinar on the strategies and options for managing closed blocks, we have had a number of follow-up questions. We’ll aim to answer as many as possible in this blog. If you any further questions, then please do not hesitate to contact us directly. What regulatory /compliance problems do [...]

This week, Celent hosted a London event on the UK regulatory topic of Retail Distribution Review (RDR) that will impact the entire life insurance industry. As Jamie Macgregor, pointed out, there are a little over 50 planning weeks until the deadline for implementation. Matt Browne from the FSA covered key points and intentions of the [...]

We are now in the final stages of our report on the opportunities and challenges facing the Life & Pensions industry resulting from the UK’s Retail Distribution Review (RDR – see my June blog entry ) and will publish shortly. In total, we have conducted 22 interviews from across both the industry and technology partners [...]

Getting back to December 2008, I wrote a blog post mentioning that Solvency II was under threat and that we could expect some more delays of its effective implementation. Last week the FSA in the UK announced that it is likely that the effective date of the new regulation implementation will have to be delayed [...]

The European Insurance team has been working hard over the Spring and Summer to produce one of our key reports Policy Administration Systems for General Insurers in Europe 2011. It’s a topic of great interest to insurers wanting to replace their core underwriting system, and vendors wanting to have a view of the competitive landscape. [...]

With less than 400 working days to go until ‘go live’ for the UK Retail Distribution Review, many Life and Pensions companies are deep in the middle of planning their implementation. Due to start on 31st December 2012, this legislation will introduce major changes to the way that new long-term savings and investment products are [...]

The much feared UK emergency budget speech was made yesterday, and amongst a raft of changes impacting every corner of the British society was an increase in the tax on insurance purchases. The rate is to increase to 6%. A new peculiarity to this system is that tax on insurance sales will rise to 17.5% [...]

Since the publication of my Solvency II report in April 2008, there have been a lot of discussions around the new set of prudential regulation currently in implementation in Europe. For instance there is a wave of criticism coming from France notably from major players on the market. According to Groupama, a few internationally diversified [...]

Celent senior analyst Donald Light This event is free to Celent clients and the media. Non-clients can attend for a fee of USD $249. Celent will contact non-clients after they register for credit card information. Please click here for more information.

The Obama administration published its white paper on financial services industry reform this week, Financial Regulatory Reform: A New Foundation, Rebuilding Financial Supervision and Regulation (http://www.financialstability.gov/docs/regs/FinalReport_web.pdf) . This will now serve as a baseline against which the legislative process can act. So, while this is not law yet, there are some broad trends which can [...]