With the successive economic and financial crises in recent decades, this perception of control is part of the past because if insurance companies withstood the effect of the crisis better than banks, they owe it partly to the control system imposed by the regulators.
Nowadays, the trend is therefore towards strengthening controls rather than relaxing them.
The control function shall ensure insurers’ compliance with laws and regulations, being financially able to meet at any time, their obligations to policyholders, without hindering growth. To these solvency rules, the requirements of good governance are added. The modern insurance company is required to be endowed with an internal control structure, administrative and accounting procedures, a reliable and steady reporting.
Compliance-checking function, which is gradually gaining ground on the market, is the last link in the chain of this preventive arsenal, standing as an additional safety barrier for insurers.
The business of insurers is to take risks to a level consistent with their objectives, to share and to manage them. They operate under the supervision of inspectors whose role is to prevent the risk of failure, to limit the consequences and repair their effects. With the globalization of markets, greater protection of the insured and the maintenance of a healthy competition among insurers, controls will only continue to gather momentum, with many others to be invented.