In this consultation, IAIS retargets its prior approach to designating systemically-important insurers (G-SIIs), creating a “holistic” approach that focuses on sector-wide activities or practices and contagion risk due to a firm’s disorderly failure. This approach also seeks to integrate insurance-sector risks with that in other sectors such as banking using macroprudential tools premised on monitoring and prompt corrective action (PCA) on a national and international basis. The consultation is complex and largely integrates this construct into an array of existing IAIS standards and statements. Although specific activities are mentioned, none is specifically cited as a near-term concern nor does the consultation make clear what would happen if one of these activities or some future ones were found to pose systemic risk. Indeed, the consultation is not clear as to how IAIS would make such a finding or what it would do in any such event, although an array of options for each is described.
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