Getting Prepared for Solvency II

Feb. 29, 2012 - PRLog -- There is still plenty of uncertainty about the requirements of Solvency II, the enormous change to come in the EU’s insurance insolvency regulations expected to cost the industry up to €3billion Europe wide. Confirmation of the implementing measures of Level 2 and the guidance and standards from Level 3 are still awaited. However, it now appears that while all insurance companies and groups have until January 2014 to be in compliance, they will also have to submit proof of their readiness during the year prior to that.
 
A Focus on Risk Management

One certainty is that to be able to do this, all the Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) systems for compliance need to be set up and running by the end of this year, so companies really need to agree their own solutions, get them approved and roll them out to implementation stage as soon as possible. Transforming their business for compliance as early as possible will have competitive advantages as well as earning brownie points. Because of the complicated rules currently known on insurance groups, some have already begun restructuring their holdings to make compliance easier.

Data Quality is Paramount

Whether they have elected to follow the standard formula or to use an internal model for calculating their solvency capital requirements under Solvency II, insurers must be able to use their data to come up with the numbers for risk and capital requirements for compliance.  Unless they can be utterly confident of the accuracy of their data, they cannot hope that, for example, their Own Risk and Solvency Assessment (ORSA) will pass scrutiny in the new regime. Without adequate data quality, insurance companies’ time under Solvency II will just run out.

A Call for Outside Help

A number of insurers need to have outside help to solve all the issues involved and are turning to well-regarded international names such as DQ Global for this assistance.  The consultancy team at DQ Global is familiar with the issues involved in making accurate and complete risk and solvency information available as and when needed. It is a continuation of their work of dealing with data compliance issues and improving data quality for their satisfied clients over many years, using the data quality products the company is continually developing.


Information for editors:

Solvency II is an EU Directive about regulating insurers that changes the capital requirements of the industry with a heightened focus on risk management. It was designed to protect the interests of policy holders and help stabilise financial systems in Europe and around the world. It should also increase returns on capital and facilitate pan European business for insurance companies.

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We have worked with over 500 businesses worldwide on a variety of data quality projects. Our deduplication software, address verification and email verification (data cleansing software suite of solutions) provide our clients with improved data quality.