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Meeting on Microinsurance - Promoting Successful Regulatory and Supervisory Approaches for Increased Access to Insurance
Co-organised with the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) and the Micro-Insurance Network (MIN)
Basel, Switzerland, 6-8 July 2010
The Financial Stability Institute of the Bank for International Settlements provide for the second time this forum for discussion on matters related to microinsurance and financial inclusion of the poor. 60 senior insurance supervisors, regulators and policy makers from 25 countries around the world attended this meeting, which focused on current opportunities and challenges, and the policy, regulatory and supervisory needs in this area.
Expert speakers from the IAIS and MIN, as well as other organisations, policymakers and supervisors with experience in microinsurance highlighted following key issues.
- Microinsurance is a relevant financial service for low-income earners.
- Supervisors play a key role in promoting a thriving microinsurance market.
- First understand your market - then regulate.
- Trusted and efficient delivery lead to actual usage of insurance.
- The key to understanding microinsurance can be summed up in one word: simplicity. It facilitates sales, understanding and fair services.
- Consumer protection is a core task for insurance supervisors.
- Concertation among sector policies and public and private stakeholders is a must.
- Diverse providers are relevant - ranging from mutuals to large insurance corporations.
- Formalisation is an important strategy in countries that have many significantly active yet informal insurers.
Formalisation will permit informal actors to upgrade and thereby provide the basis for large-scale and sustainable insurance delivery to the poor. Each jurisdiction has to define its own threshold for this. If entry requirements are lowered, supervisory capacity must be considered from the outset.
All this should happen under the premise of efficiency, fairness and proportionality. Proportionality ensures that regulation is tailored to the risks, nature and size of the microinsurance operations. These principles are important to move forward.
These matters are expected to be the subject of more elaboration when the Joint Working Group of the IAIS and the Microinsurance Network moves forward with their workplan to provide more elaborative standards and guidance regarding formalisation issues.
