Articles - Aon Benfield comment on the new UK Solvency II start date

 There is undoubtedly an element of surprise to today’s announcement from the FSA of the revised Solvency II dates for the UK. For those companies that have invested significantly in preparing for the original 2013 start date, we believe the next step is to capitalise on their position of achieving regulatory compliance ahead of schedule. By leveraging the investment in risk management, we are seeing companies rethinking their business strategy to achieve positive results under the future Solvency II capital framework - across both insurance and investment.

 On the other hand, smaller UK companies will breathe a sigh of relief with the deadline extension, giving them more time to manage this challenging framework. Each insurer requires an individual approach and we continue to work with clients to help them maximise the return on their Solvency II investment. Our involvement focuses primarily on areas such as catastrophe risk, model validation projects, investment optimisation solutions, benchmarking of premium and reserve risk parameters and structuring solutions for those companies with pressure on capital due to economic uncertainty.