Input on Insurance

Chairman,
Depending on how we the co-legislators regulate the insurance industry, the ultimate effect will be on consumers who are meant to enjoy the same level of protection across the EU.
However regulatory costs need to be kept in mind. One size fits all arrangements in this sector too, can serve to create burdens without enhancing competition or consumer protection.
Which is why perhaps it might make sense to address the issue before us not via a Regulation, but via a Directive.
However, now that the EIOPA is finalising its Technical Advice based on which the Commission will draft the measures, I would like to underline that the European insurance industry is not only characterised by big and medium sized enterprises, but also by small, and indeed micro units. This is the case in Malta, but also I believe in other island and isolated regions.
Therefore, delegated acts should be proportionate and appropriate and should guarantee a certain degree of flexibility for those that have to implement them: manufacturers, intermediaries and distributors.
The texts that are being suggested lack this flexibity.
Taking into account the principle of proportionality within the technical advice first, means that small or micro enterprises should as insurance intermediaries, be put in the position to comply with the delegated acts, within the parameters they find themselves in.
For them, what is being proposed will give rise to a prohibitive regulatory burden, that will increase greatly the costs of compliance, without providing additional value to consumers who will after all have to pay. I have been alerted to this problem by many operators in my country and am simply putting on record their dismay.
This is a matter that can be solved if common sense and a genuine awareness of how small scale scenarios operate, are brought into play.