There is an interesting piece by David Walker in Insurance Asset Risk on May 5th about German life insurers: ‘German regulator “intensively supervising” 20 life firms.’
The phrase “intensively supervising” got our attention. To elaborate:
Mark Branson, president of BaFin, has revealed about 20 German life insurers are currently under “intensive supervision”, all suffering “legacy issues from earlier guarantee promises”. About 30 pension funds are also being watched closely.
Looks like a lot of German life insurers and pension funds have been using Equitable Life as a how-to manual.
One also has to wonder why BaFin took so long to wake up to this issue – it can’t be that they were too busy harassing FT journalists investigating the Wirecard scandal, because that blew up over a year ago.