Oliver Ralph's article in the FT will ring bells with many a life company CFO, as insurance investors increasingly look for simplified and more standardised capital reporting.
It would appear that some of the benefits which arrived with what is widely considered to be a more robust, egalitarian reporting framework under Solvency 2 may have been lost by IFRS accounting rules. It may take time shareholders to acclimatise to the various measures which have replaced (where they were applicable) local GAAP rules...
The EU’s Solvency II insurance rules have failed to give investors a clear picture of insurers’ financial health, according to new research.
The regime, which was introduced last year, was supposed to make it easier for investors to evaluate insurers and to compare companies across European borders.
But, according to a report from Autonomous Research and Willis Towers Watson, Solvency II has done little to add clarity to the industry’s notoriously complex financial reporting.
“Solvency II has created more consistency across Europe on capital reporting, but less consistency with the other financial measures that insurers use,” said Kamran Foroughi, a director at Willis Towers Watson. “In the past we had a situation where local accounting and capital rules were aligned with each other but that is no longer the case.”