A Decade of Leadership at the IAIS - Reflections on Global Insurance Supervision with Jonathan Dixon

So when you're looking back on this pa- past eight years, what are you most proud of, and what proved to be the most challenging situations along the way?

Yeah, as you said, that it's, it's certainly been a lively time these past years.

I think there certainly have been some remarkable milestones for the IAIS over these years.

It's been a very intense period of standard-setting.

Much of this was linked to gaps already identified during the global financial crisis, including group-wide supervision and macroprudential supervision, all of the fault lines revealed by the crisis.

And if I look back, this has led to a lot of activity on some key initiatives, like the development of the common framework for the supervision of internationally active insurance groups or ComFrame for short, and the holistic framework for the assessment and mitigation of systemic risk, both of which we adopted in twenty nineteen.

And then, of course, the last big building block, which was the finalization of the insurance capital standard, the quantitative element of ComFrame, which you referenced and which we adopted in December twenty twenty-four.

And these, of course, stand out as formidable achievements, particularly the ICS.

If you just think about the scale of the project, it scanned more than thirteen years.

And you talk about challenging, certainly [chuckles] the complexity of reaching agreement on a common approach to group capital, given the real diversity of insurance business models and regulatory structures around the world.

So I think these are...

That was a sort of standout achievement.

But looking back, what am I most proud of? I think it's probably less the what but-- and maybe the how.

It's probably the resilience and the perseverance that the IAIS demonstrated in reaching these areas of global consensus amidst what you correctly pointed out was quite a challenging environment at the time.

And if I think about it, I think it was built on two things.

So firstly, a real respect for the diversity of perspectives and circumstances among our members, but while at the same time staying focused on our common objectives.

And secondly, I would say a real sort of strong foundation of trust and collaboration among our members.

And I often say in that sense that I think the journey was just as important as the destination because it was really through working on these global reforms like the ICS that I think all of the members around the table learned a great deal about each other's different systems and also built a deeper understanding of the fact that we actually have shared objectives, but that these can be achieved in different ways.

So that's been a rich part of the experience.

And maybe a last thing I would mention if I look back, I think it has been really rewarding to see the elevation of insurance on the global policy agenda.

Through our IAIS engagements with the IMF, the World Bank, G7, G20, it's amazing to see now the consensus that insurance is critical for societal resilience, but it's also foundational to sustainable development and job creation.

And I think this policy engagement has also really amplified the IAIS's impact on global policymaking.

All in all, it's been a really rewarding, occasionally exhausting, but always rewarding time.

And ultimately, it is the people and relationships that holds the IAIS community together.

I've been very lucky to work alongside some really talented and dedicated people in the membership, in the secretariat team, and among the stakeholder community.