zeb continued its zeb Financial Market Roundtable series with another roundtable event in Düsseldorf. At these events, renowned representatives from politics and financial institutions discuss the latest fiscal issues with a small, selected group of participants from the financial industry.

In front of board members of well-known insurance companies, Dr. Frank Grund, Chief Executive Director of Insurance and Pension Funds Supervision at the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) since October 2015, stressed the importance of maintaining commensurability, appropriateness and proportionality in supervision. “Supervising with a sense of proportion” was therefore the central principle. However, it was difficult to reconcile European interests, national sensitivities, particular interests of individual institutions and political considerations of associations. Dr. Grund named the most important challenges for supervisory authorities and the industry in this year, which were regulatory changes in the commission-protected sale of life and residual debt insurance, the review of the Solvency II supervisory regime, the streamlining of the reporting system, the strengthening of the own profile due to the industry’s ongoing digital transformation, the clear definition of sustainability at European level and the necessary prerequisites for start-ups. Dr. Grund explained: “The industry is anything but a ‘closed shop’. Politics, technology, ecology, society: many developments eventually enter the sector. Industry and supervisory authorities are therefore well advised to accept this constant change and to play an active role in shaping it.”

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