EU insurance regulator sees need for direct oversight role

European insurance regulators may need to take on some direct supervisory powers as the nationally-based regime is leaving supervisory gaps on the EU-wide playing field, the EU's top insurance regulator has warned.

“We need to be able to step in when national supervisors cannot or will not stop detriment to consumers,” the chief of the EU's insurance regulatory body EIOPA, Petra Hielkema, told a conference hosted by her unit.

EIOPA “needs to have at least the same powers as national supervisors.”

Insurance firms are increasingly utilizing the EU's freedom of services passports to deliver services out of their home state without establishing subsidiaries throughout the bloc, thus joining local guarantee systems and submitting to direct regulatory oversight by local authorities.

Hielkema can quickly note a “malfunctioning of supervisory reach” in that new reality.

EIOPA has strings it can pull with the national regulators to instigate oversight, but “too often the outcome is too little and very much too late.”

The road to enhanced bloc-wide regulatory powers will not likely be revolutionary, the EIOPA chief admitted to conference delegates.

“This change is not something that should or can come overnight,” she said. “But it is for sure part of the road forward.”

EIOPA will begin putting general recommendations on the matter to the next European Commission following 2024 European elections, she indicated.

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