Supporting supervisory practices
As the global standard setter for insurance supervision, the IAIS has an essential role in supporting insurance supervisors in implementing its standards. The IAIS achieves this by facilitating the exchange of information and sharing good supervisory practices among insurance supervisors. Through this collaborative approach, the IAIS aims to enhance the understanding of supervisory issues and promote consistent and effective insurance supervision worldwide. The IAIS also recognises the importance of providing tailored resources to address the diverse challenges faced by insurance supervisors globally.
To this end, the IAIS develops various supporting materials tailored to the interests and demands of insurance supervisors. The materials are developed based on feedback from implementation assessment activities or may address emerging trends and developments in the insurance sector. The IAIS also recognises the importance of providing tailored resources to address the diverse challenges faced by insurance supervisors globally.
Supporting materials are generally classified into the following categories:
Application papers
Application papers provide supporting material related to specific supervisory material (ICPs or Comframe). Application papers could be provided in circumstances where the practical application of principles and standards may vary or where their interpretation and implementation may pose challenges. Application papers do not include new requirements, but provide further advice, illustrations, recommendations or examples of good practice to supervisors on how supervisory material may be implemented. The proportionality principle applies to the content of application papers.
Issues papers
Issues papers provide background on particular topics, describe current practices, actual examples or case studies pertaining to a particular topic and/or identify related regulatory and supervisory issues and challenges. Issues papers are primary descriptive and not meant to create expectations on how supervisors should implement supervisory material. Issues papers often form part of the preparatory work for developing standards and may contain recommendations for future work by the IAIS.
Notes and reports
The IAIS also develops other notes and reports which often are more exploratory in nature, for instance to describe an emerging trend or development and its relevance to insurance supervision. Such notes and reports may also include recommendations for future work by the IAIS.
- IAIS notes are primarily developed by the IAIS Secretariat or other individual authors, sometimes in collaboration with external organisations. Unlike reports and issues papers, IAIS notes do not require formal approval by the IAIS Executive Committee.
- IAIS reports are materials developed through the IAIS committee structure. They are relatively short documents and do not require a formal public consultation process.
Both IAIS notes and reports may include recommendations for future work by the IAIS, highlighting areas that require further attention or research.