News from the Latin American ASSAL Conference 2012

The Association of Insurance Supervisors of Latin America, ASSAL, is an international organisation that brings together the supervisory authorities for the insurance sector in Latin America. There are...

The Association of Insurance Supervisors of Latin America, ASSAL, is an international organisation that brings together the supervisory authorities for the insurance sector in Latin America. There are 22 member countries, 20 Latin American countries which are full members and two associate members, Spain and Portugal.

The objectives of the ASSAL organisation are:

  • Sharing of information on legislation, control methods, market tendencies and operating systems in each of the countries in the areas of insurance and reinsurance.
  • Collect and disseminate technical information and statistics.
  • Promote cooperation amongst members.
  • Analyse the development of reinsurance in the region.
  • Encourage regional educational programmes in insurance and reinsurance.
  • Harmonise the politics and mechanisms of supervision.
  • Share the experiences in the member countries on specific themes of the insurance industry.

From April 22 to 26, 2012, the “XXIII Annual Meeting of ASSAL and XIII Conference on Insurance Regulation and Supervision in Latin America IAIS-ASSAL” took place in Guayaquil, Ecuador. This was with the collaboration of the International Association of Insurance Insurance Supervisors (IAIS), the European Insurance and Pension Plans (EIOPA), the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) and the Banking and Insurance of Ecuador Regulator.

ICMIF was represented at the Conference by Juan Carlos Godoy (Chairman, Rio Uruguay Seguros) and Rafael Moliterno (Chairman, Seguros Unimed, Brazil) as official representatives of the ICMIF/Americas board. Francisco Morales (General Manager of Coopseguros del Ecuador Ltda) also attended the Conference.

The programme had several issues of particular interest to members of ICMIF:

First, a session on “Quantitative Solvency Requirements: Technical Reserves and Capital Requirements¨ which is important because it could have a major impact on our members as that they have no access to external capital and are of differing sizes in their respective markets.

Other sessions of interest looked at ¨Corporate Governance, Risk Management and Internal Control” and “Transparency, Disclosure and Market Discipline”, looking at governance and transparency of our organisations. ICMIF members have impressed many supervisory authorities as being role models for best practice.

The session on the new principles of the IAIS (Core Insurance Principles, Standards, Guidance and Assessment Methodology), was important to understand the essentials of the principles, changes in the principles and current thinking of the supervisors.

The last session of particular interest to mention was the panel discussion on “Recent Developments in the Insurance Sector in the Region” in which one of the speakers was Andrea Keenan, Assistant Vice President, Economic and Industrial Research from A.M. Best, one of the ICMIF Supporting Members. A few weeks ago Andrea participated in a microinsurance webinar offered by A.M. Best which also involved Sabbir Patel, Senior Vice-President ICMIF.

Andrea will also participate in the 20th ICMIF/Americas Conference to be held from November 14 to 16 in Buenos Aires. Also attending will be her colleague, Matthew Mosher, Senior Vice President and Head of the Ratings Division. In the video above Juan Carlos Godoy shares the news with our members from the ASSAL conference and you can also download the report from Juan Carlos and Rafael Moliterno on the conference below (in Spanish).

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