From the Desk of the Secretary General – January 2024
Let me start by wishing our readers a great start to 2024. Already, 2024 is shaping up to be a busy and productive year.
Last week, the IAIS launched its 2024 Roadmap. The Roadmap provides significant continuity to our work, with many projects continuing from 2023.
2024 stands as a defining year for the global Insurance Capital Standards (ICS), set to be adopted as a prescribed capital requirement (PCR) for Internationally Active Insurance Groups (IAIGs) by year-end. This will conclude the five-year monitoring period of the ICS and will mark the culmination of a 13-year journey from an idea emerging in the aftermath of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis to an agreed global solvency standard for IAIGs. The ICS is one of the most empirically tested and widely consulted global regulatory standards. It will create, for the first time, a common language for the supervisory discussion of the solvency positions of IAIGs and help enhance global convergence among group capital standards.
The Association will also maintain its annual cycle of assessing global risks and trends through the Global Monitoring Exercise (GME), with deeper analyses of themes identified through the 2023 GME process, including structural shifts in the life insurance sector. Our 2023 GIMAR, published last month, detailed the findings of the GME and has proven to be one of our most widely read publications of the year.
Beyond identifying and assessing global trends, our mandate extends to supporting our members in responding to key strategic themes that affect the insurance sector and the broader financial system. These themes include climate risk, digital innovation, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), financial inclusion, operational resilience and cyber risk, and protection gaps. On climate, this quarter will see the launch of a third consultation on the supervision of climate-related, the responses to which will feed into a comprehensive application paper on climate risk in the insurance sector by the end of the year.
Under this Roadmap and for the foreseeable future, we will build on our significant progress in implementation assessment and support. In 2024, the IAIS will advance several initiatives to both assess the comprehensive and consistent implementation of our agreed reforms and help members identify gaps in their observance of IAIS Insurance Core Principles (ICPs). Effective peer exchange, capacity building and supervisory cooperation remain focal points, supported by valuable partnerships with our implementation partners and regional coordinators. Simultaneously, the IAIS will continue to support our peer exchange forums, engaging members from close to 80 supervisory authorities.
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Finally, all of these activities are underpinned by our commitment to continuous improvement in the efficient and impactful execution of our operations. 2024 will see further enhancements to the IAIS Member’s User Portal, strengthening digital operational processes and external collaboration. We will also continue to advance additional measures aimed at maximising the benefits of our diversity of membership through purposeful inclusion initiatives and enhanced engagement with members and stakeholders.
We look forward to productive collaboration across all IAIS committees, working groups and partnerships to progress the objectives of the 2024 Roadmap.
Notably, this Roadmap will be the final one developed under the 2020-2024 Strategic Plan. The next five-year Strategic Plan, covering 2025-2029, is currently in development and well underway. Engagement with members and stakeholders in 2023, including a survey and roundtable sessions at the Annual Conference in Tokyo last November, has greatly shaped its development. Further engagement and information sessions are planned in the coming months.
This year, the IAIS celebrates its 30th anniversary. The Association has significantly evolved since its founding in 1994. From its humble beginnings as an informal forum for exchange amongst supervisors, it has become the global standard-setting body for insurance and an integral part of the global financial architecture.
The same pioneering spirit of cooperation that founded the IAIS three decades ago inspires us to persist in collaborative efforts, finding appropriate and proportionate approaches to protect policyholders, foster sustainable growth, enhance financial stability, and enable the insurance sector to effectively address societal challenges and bolster resilience in our complex, multi-crises world.
I look forward to another year of collective efforts and progress.