EIOPA has updated their website (and published 37 new papers!)

  1. Home
  2. Insights
  3. Blog
  4. EIOPA has updated their website (and published 37 new papers!)
Those of who you who are regular users of our blogs and use our links to the relevant parts of the EIOPA website may have already discovered that EIOPA has helpfully re-designed the site so none of those links work anymore!

Whilst it is not new, it is worth highlighting the useful page setting out EIOPA’s role in the Solvency II project, advising the European Commission and delivering Implementing Technical Standards (ITS) and Guidelines. This page is a useful navigation point for all the past papers published by EIOPA and provides a timeline for the delivery of future publications. The new link to this page can be found here (until they change the site again).

At the same time, EIOPA has been very busy issuing two sets of papers.

Finalisation of Set 1 of the Guidelines

These papers (published on 3 December) provide responses and outcomes from the wave of consultation papers on Set 1 of the Solvency II Guidelines which were issued in the Summer, see our blog for more details on this.  These cover:

  • contract boundaries
  • valuation of technical provisions
  • ancillary own funds
  • classification of own funds
  • ring-fenced funds
  • treatment of related undertakings, including participations
  • look-through
  • basis risk
  • application of outwards reinsurance arrangements to the non-life underwriting risk sub-module
  • treatment of market and counterparty risk exposure in the standard formula
  • application of the life underwriting risk module
  • health catastrophe risk sub-module
  • loss absorbing capacity of technical provisions and deferred taxes
  • USPs
  • internal models
  • group solvency calculation
  • equivalence assessment of National Supervisory Authorities
  • supervisory review process

A final report on the Guidelines relating to Governance and ORSA is yet to be published, this is expected in February 2015.

Consultation on Set 2 of the ITS and Guidelines

This is the group of consultation papers (issued on 2 December) on Set 2, the final set, of Solvency II ITS and Guidelines, with a deadline of 2 March 2015 for comments. These cover all 3 pillars of Solvency II:

Pillar 1 – ITS

Pillar 1 – Guidelines
  • regional governments and local authorities treated as exposures
  • equity index for the Equity dampener (to be published soon)
  • pegged currencies
  • health risk equalisation systems standard deviations
  • equity transitional
  • valuation assets and liabilities
  • long-term guarantees and transitional measures

Pillar 2 - ITS

 Pillar 2 - Guidelines
  • procedures when assessing external credit assessments
  • supervisory transparency and accountability
  • capital add-ons
  • extension of the recovery period
Pillar 3 - ITS Pillar 3 - Guidelines
  • regular supervisory reporting
  • public disclosure procedures, formats and templates
  • methods to determine the market share for the purpose of exemptions to supervisory reporting
  • financial stability reporting
  • reporting and disclosure
  • exchange of information between colleges

EIOPA is also consulting on Guidelines for supervising branches of third-country insurance undertakings, which don’t neatly fit under one of the 3 pillars.

Finally, EIOPA is consulting on the Regulatory Technical Standard (RTS), providing advice to the European Commission on the recovery plan, finance scheme and supervisory powers in deteriorating financial condition. The deadline for comments on this paper is 18 February 2015.

What’s next?

A complete set of the Set 1 Guidelines, in all European languages, should be available from February 2015 and from this point, until March 2015, the comply-or-explain procedure will run with supervisors. In advance of this, firms should familiarise themselves with the final Guidelines and any revisions that have been made.

Set 2 of the ITS and Guidelines are open for consultation so firms should review these and provide comments to EIOPA in time for the deadline. The final ITS will be submitted to the European Commission at the end of June 2015 and EIOPA’s response to the Guidelines consultation is expected in July 2015.

There is a considerable amount of material to be read, coinciding with a particularly busy point in insurers’ calendars, but the Solvency II implementation date is looming so time must be made. We are planning on producing more detailed blogs on various aspects of these papers in the new year, hopefully these will be of some assistance to our readers.