UK to Publish More Insurance Regulatory Data…. in Aggregate
The Bank of England and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) are seeking comment on plans to publish quarterly, aggregated data on the UK Insurance market.
Recognising the value of the breadth and depth of data contained in the regular structured disclosures required by Solvency II, the PRA hope to improve analysis and insight in the insurance sector by publishing core data externally.
The publication of PRA core insurance statistics will be accompanied by underlying aggregate granular data, to enable user’s own analyses. For ease of analysis the PRA aim to incorporate aggregated statistics published by the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA). Further, to improve user engagement, the PRA also plan to include interactive tables and charts in the publication.
Our view? This is a very useful first step in making relevant structured data collected through mandatory disclosures more widely accessible and useable and we’re encouraged to see this development. We’d encourage the PRA (and other regulators across the world) to experiment with the upcoming xBRL-JSON and xBRL-CSV specifications which may well prove very useful tools in projects of this sort. Providing data together with machine readable metadata (the XBRL taxonomies) very significantly enhances the utility of this sort of complex information.
The process of companies themselves providing usable, structured data (the so-called “Pillar III” disclosures) has not emerged to date. Indeed, most financial institution Pillar III disclosures are light on usable data. And regulators have not (yet) taken the step of providing significant company-specific data to markets and other users. That said, these kinds of aggregate disclosures are very useful and welcome adjunct to the other information available and can assist in providing additional market disciplines in this important field.
If you have any comments – particularly on the scope and depth of the content and how it is presented – the PRA are welcoming views on the paper until 16 March. Feedback should be sent to InsuranceDataRelease@bankofengland.co.uk.
Read more here.
