“We are not in tranquil times. We are confronted almost daily with a new crisis. So much so that we could almost say that we are living in a state of permacrisis. But despite this, we – supervisors and also industry – are riding out the storm. Our sectors are resilient, sustainable and competitive,” said EIOPA’s Chairperson Petra HIELKEMA, in her keynote speech opening the EIOPA Conference on 21 November 2023.

Acknowledging the almost permanent state of crisis that characterized Europe in the recent years - from COVID-19, climate change, geopolitical conflict, to the rising cost of living -, the EIOPA Conference 2023 titled “Hidden risks and new horizons” aimed at looking beyond the current state of flux to consider supervision in a world with daily new dynamics, a world of horizontal regulation, and one in which new media creates movements that are not always in economic models.

In her speech, Petra HIELKEMA emphasized the need for a more integrated approach to cross-border business supervision. “More than 10% of gross written premiums stem from cross-border business – a figure that is growing. At a time that the insurance sector is moving away from groups with subsidiaries in several Member States to groups that act on the basis of freedom of services out of one Member State, the absence of insurance guarantee schemes and the malfunctioning of supervisory reach needs to be addressed,” she said. For the time being, HIELKEMA explained later, there is a clear lack of efficiency in solving the cases when an insurer causes any kind of problems in a host market, as the supervising rights are entirely assigned to the market authority in the domicile market. EIOPA's intervention in malfunctions where home and host supervisors are poorly coordinated or unable or unwilling to act, can only result in recommendations. Overall, the process is lengthy and often unsatisfactory.

“We need to be able to step in when national supervisors cannot or will not stop detriment to consumers. At those moments EIOPA – and with EIOPA I mean my Board consisting of the Heads of 27 national competent authorities and myself - needs to have at least the same powers as national supervisors. If we want to be a strong competitive industry we need to become more integrated than we currently are,” she said.

Another issue touched by EIOPA Chairperson’s speech was the protection gap that still exists in Europe. “Protection gaps still exist. And in Europe they are sizeable. Only 25% of natural catastrophe losses were insured in the past, 70% of SMEs are not covered for the risk of a cyber-attack. Close to 20% of people are at risk of poverty in old age.”

Data combined with innovation, technology, AI and many other things need to be put together to achieve European goals on reducing the protection gap. Yet, looking beyond the actual tools, increasing the protection coverage is very much an issue related to public psychology and financial literacy. Moreover, there is also a matter of better identifying the gaps and their dimensions. Despite the difficulties arising from the big diversity of the European markets, EIOPA is committed to raising and computing enough data to allow a better knowledge on the arising risks and existing insurance and pension gaps.

The full transcription of the keynote speech given by EIOPA’s Chairperson Petra HIELKEMA is available here.

The video recording of the EIOPA Conference 2023 titled “Hidden risks and new horizons” is available on YouTube.