INSURANCE

EUROPE: MiFID offers both opportunities and burdens.

The Market in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), to be implemented in November 2007, aims to create a single market for financial services in Europe. Amongst its myriad aims are the creation of genuinely competitive and consistently well regulated markets for financial services throughout the EU.

Although implementation raises significant IT and Compliance burdens it will be important to focus equally on the business opportunities that are offered.

The EU Commission and national regulators envisage that most benefit will accrue to the prime movers. The predicted advantages are the ability to distribute products into other national markets and the uniform regulatory landscape and its concomitant reduction in the costs and difficulties of doing business in non-native markets. However, there is a feeling that it will be hard for retail-focussed institutions to gain significant advantages in the short-term as existing distribution channels will continue to predominate.