General Insurance Article - LCP comments on IORP II Solvency announcement

 Jonathan Camfield, partner at LCP said: “We’re pleased that the European Commission has finally seen sense in the face of such strong opposition, and is dropping its proposals for pension schemes to be required to hold insurance-style reserves. This would have been crippling for the UK economy.”

 “However, we may not be out of the woods yet. The EC has made it clear they are pushing ahead with other aspects of their proposals in the areas of governance and transparency. It is reasonable to assume that this includes the possibility of requiring pension schemes and sponsoring companies to disclose new financial information that is prepared in line with insurance company style regulations.”

 “Preparing this information would be an unwelcome additional burden on UK pension schemes. But perhaps more importantly, it runs the risk of becoming a measuring stick for pension risk. For example ratings agencies, credit analysts, lending banks and investors might start using the numbers to assess pension risk for UK companies. This might be fine if the required figures were fit for purpose, but from everything we have seen so far, we strongly suspect they won’t be.”