The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced yesterday that they have brought charges against a broker dealer for offering fictitious securities for sale on social sites. There are several good messages involved with this announcement. First, the person charged was caught before completing a sale. There is no more proactive protection than that. Second, this [...]

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 [...]

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% [...]

The British property insurance market is a sizable one, and is the second largest sector in general insurance, after motor, with a reported premium of £12.1 billion in 2008. In the last five years, claims and expenses for the sector have risen by 22%, while premium (commercial, household, and domestic) has only grown by 15%. [...]

It is at this time of the year that Celent conducts its famous surveys providing useful insights about insurers preoccupations, priorities and plans for the coming year. This year we have decided to apply the same usual method for the United States market. In other words, our readers will be able to access our famous [...]

A bit more than one year ago in the middle of the financial crisis, some banks and one big insurer have been saved by governments since their bankruptcy would have put the whole international financial system in great danger. “Too big to fail” is the expression that has been widely used to caracterize this policy. [...]

China’s new insurance law will take effect on October 1 2009. The revised law strengthens protection for policyholders, the insured, and beneficiaries. However, it adds operational requirements for insurance companies. For example, the revised law adds a two-year incontestable rule to protect the insured party. It is a very common clause in Western countries, but [...]

As 2008 draws to a close, so does the world as we know it – at least in terms of insurance regulation. In 2009, the “price” of the public investment in the financial industry will come due and there will be fundamental change to past approaches in oversight. After a career in the property casualty [...]