The Architecture of Insurance Supervision: Global Trends Before and After the Financial Crisis

The recent financial crisis has provoked a broad spectrum of regulatory observations and possible responses. Currently most of these proposals have been quick solutions to politically pressing questions and often only address parts of regulatory systems, but not the whole. At times, the result has been more confusion than clarity. Although historically wide-ranging reshaping has been a common phenomenon after the severe failure of an existing financial infrastructure, there is an important difference this time – the global reach of today's markets and enterprises. Moreover, never before have so many reforms following a banking crisis not only affected the banking sector but also other parts of the financial services sector, such as insurance, the social systems and, of course, our real economy.