Archive

Some signs of agreement on how financial leverage will be presented under the new insurance contracts accounting standard are emerging, but options remain open, as Christopher Cundy reports

The IFRS 17 accounting standard is due to be implemented in five months' time, but many insurers are leaving it until the eleventh hour to reveal what impact the transition will have on their financial metrics. Christopher Cundy and Paul Walsh report

Low interest rates killed off European life insurance products that offered policyholders guaranteed annual returns. Even now as rates rise, David Walker finds practitioners are ready to bury the concept

Expanding an insurance business in good times typically meant growing profits. In today's tougher economic environment, Europe's largest insurers are being much more prudent about spending capital, and are only considering very careful expansion, as David Walker writes

European life insurers' capital consumption used to give their CEOs indigestion. But the "capital-lite" diets of Allianz and others has transformed the business, as David Walker discovers

Allianz has become self-sustaining for capital on new life and health insuring

Wertgarantie, Versicherungskammer Bayern and Alte Leipziger perform well despite coronavirus

Europe's third-largest insurance industry has survived the coronavirus pandemic so far, but continues to be plagued by low rates and poor profitability in motor and home cover, as David Walker describes in this special report featuring interviews with BaFin's Frank Grund and GDV's Jörg Asmussen

German life insurers paid more into the Zinszusatzreserve again in 2020, despite the new "corridor method" of calculation that intended to unburden the sector. Industry leaders tell David Walker the ZZR remains fit for purpose nonetheless

German trade association backs methodology revised in 2018