Supervisors across Europe continue to strengthen POG supervision

20 July 2023

The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) published today a peer review report on product oversight and governance (POG). This is the first peer review in the area of conduct of business supervision to assess how national supervisors in the European Economic Area (EEA) are supervising the application of POG requirements by insurance manufacturers.

The peer review has found that most national competent authorities (NCAs) have adapted their supervisory approaches and processes to the supervision of POG requirements in line with the provisions introduced by the Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD) and the POG Delegated Regulation.

Several NCAs were in the process of improving their supervisory POG frameworks to ensure good consumer outcomes during the peer review’s reference period, while some NCAs were still building their supervisory POG framework. Although there were significant differences between NCAs as to the level of maturity of POG supervision, sound progress has been made in laying the necessary foundations.

Based on the peer review, EIOPA has issued a set of recommended actions to national supervisors with the objective of building on the existing foundations to further strengthen POG supervision. Considering that several NCAs were already in the process of improving their POG framework, EIOPA expects significant progress to be already visible when going back to NCAs for initial follow-up after six months.

Next steps

As a follow-up of this peer review, EIOPA will monitor and assess NCAs’ implementation of the recommended actions to the extent that they have not already been implemented.

EIOPA will also consider how to best reflect the overall findings of the peer review in its work on consumer protection and supervisory convergence.

Background

In the context of enhancing supervisory convergence and in accordance with its mandate, EIOPA regularly conducts peer reviews in close collaboration with NCAs with the aim of strengthening both the convergence of supervisory practices across Europe and the capacity of NCAs to conduct high-quality and effective supervision.

EIOPA has undertaken considerable supervisory convergence work on POG before and during the peer review. In April 2020, EIOPA included a dedicated Chapter on POG in its Supervisory Handbook, which provides guidance to NCAs. In October 2020 EIOPA also issued its approach to the supervision of POG.