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Recent Articles

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  11/02/2020

  Insurance 2020: The Customer Lens

  What will that mean in practice? Perhaps most telling is Mr Woolard’s comment that the “Principle for Business [which] requires firms to communicate in a way which is fair, clear and not misleading, and [pay] due regard to the information needs of its clients … seems like too low a bar”. The Principle focuses on the firm’s processes, rather than the outcome the FCA is looking for – which is consumers understanding their options; and the FCA’s concern is that even if firms comply with the numerous rules regarding disclosure, there is no guarantee that the...

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  30/01/2020

  Insurance 2020: The Belgian perspective

  The Belgian regulators, the National Bank of Belgium and the Financial Services and Markets Authority, have welcomed UK insurers and brokers to Belgium and shown flexibility and understanding about their need to transfer their activities to Belgium gradually in order to maintain operational continuity. They have also promised to apply the proportionality principle in their supervision of firms. That said, the regulators have made clear that they want to see viable standalone Belgian operations and the operations set up initially will not suffice. Given how many times exit day has been postponed...

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  21/01/2020

  Insurance 2020: InsurTech and the future of retail insurance

  With Open Banking, the consumer, engaging via an app or website, chooses whether or not to give that app or website permission to access data that is already held by another. If they change their mind, the app or website should make it easy for them to withdraw their consent. The evidence to date is that consumers are already taking up Open Banking products and services. We are seeing many regulated apps and service providers bringing innovative financial products and services to the market. That in turn is sparking a new conversation - can Open Banking become a blueprint for the wider digital...

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  16/01/2020

  Insurance 2020: Keeping an eye on the competition

  Are insurers’ pricing practices in the best interests of consumers? Consumer interests remains the key driver for regulatory intervention in the retail general insurance market and insurers can expect to be reviewing carefully their consumer pricing policies in 2020. Following the CMA’s investigation of so-called loyalty penalties, the FCA is expected to issue its final report into pricing practices in the retail general insurance market in the first quarter of 2020, after the publication of its interim report in October 2019. The FCA has provisionally found that competition is not...

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  13/01/2020

  Insurance 2020: Year Ahead

  Following the general election promise to ‘get Brexit done’, Brexit will, of course, continue to dominate, driving further corporate reorganisations and movement out of capital-intensive products. Many insurers have already set up operations in Belgium and Luxembourg in preparation for Brexit, and we will be looking at what’s going on in the Belgian and Luxembourg insurance markets. Customer needs will be a big theme again this year, with the FCA continuing work on its ‘TCF package’ looking at pricing and distribution, value for money, intergenerational differences,...

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  07/10/2019

  Pricing practices in the FCA spotlight

  Background The FCA launched this market study in October 2018 with the aim of understanding whether pricing practices in the home and motor insurance sector negatively affect consumer outcomes and competition. It followed a thematic review of the general insurance sector in which the FCA identified a discrepancy between prices paid by new customers and renewing customers who had stayed with a provider for a long time, and it was concerned this might cause consumer harm. Such practices were also the subject of a super-complaint from the Citizens Advice Bureau to the Competition and Market Authority...

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