The product drift

The larger providers of new life savings products continue to drift towards those environments that offer greatest regulatory freedom. Will Solvency II put paid to this trend? Blake Evans-Pritchard reports

In the absence of a harmonised insurance regulatory framework, many European firms are hunting out territories that offer the freedom and flexibility to develop products that best match the market they are trying to sell into. Under the EU's so-called third life directive, insurers can establish a base in one European country in order to sell products into another. The country where the firm is headquartered provides prudential supervision, whilst the countries where the firm sells its products