ComFrame
A common framework adopted in 2019 by the International Association of Insurance Supervisors to supervise internationally active insurance groups, including the international capital standard.
Large insurance groups operate in dozens of countries, supervised by national authorities applying different rules. None naturally has a full view of a group whose risks, capital flows and intra-group guarantees cross borders. The International Association of Insurance Supervisors adopted in November 2019 a common framework, ComFrame, for supervising internationally active insurance groups. These groups are defined by size and internationalization criteria: activity in at least three jurisdictions, a significant share of premiums outside the home country, and a high threshold of assets or premiums. The framework sets expectations for group governance, risk management at consolidated level, recovery planning and cooperation among supervisors, organized around a group supervisor and supervisory colleges. It includes the international capital standard, designed to measure these groups' solvency comparably. ComFrame has no legal force of its own: it applies through transposition into national law, which explains uneven implementation. It illustrates the difficulty of global regulation for an industry whose national regimes, Solvency II, the US regime, Asian regimes, rest on different philosophies.
Textbook case: an insurance group present in twenty countries is identified as internationally active. Its group supervisor convenes a college of the authorities of its main host countries each year, reviews its recovery plan and asks it to calculate its solvency under the international standard, in addition to Solvency II.
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