An international group of insurance supervisors Monday released an updated draft of a global framework to foster cooperation among local regulators, which face the challenge of regulating companies with sizeable business outside their home country.The group has been working on a global framework--dubbed ComFrame--for about two years, and is now inviting national supervisors and insurance companies, among others, to comment on the draft rules, until Aug. 31.
The group is known as the International Association of Insurance Supervisors, or IAIS, and is affiliated with the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland.
Once established, the framework should work as a reference for local supervisors, to help them make supervision of globally active insurers more effective. It also aims to establish better supervisory cooperation and to foster global convergence of regulatory measures and approaches.
This is important because global insurance companies today are typically conducting business outside their home countries through locally incorporated subsidiaries. The framework should make it easier for the supervisor in a host country to cooperate with the regulator in the country where an insurer is based.
"In our increasingly globally interconnected financial marketplace, supervisors need the ability to efficiently coordinate and cooperate across multiple borders," said Peter Braumuller, Chair of the IAIS Executive Committee.