12 September 2008

McCreevy - cross-border supervision for Insurance and Banking

Among the most important issues to resolve is group supervision and group support, Commissioner McCreevy said and also announced amendments to the CRD and a White Paper on financial stability. 

Among the most important issues to resolve is group supervision and group support, Commissioner McCreevy said and also announced amendments to the CRD and a White Paper on financial stability.  

 

“There is already a great deal of agreement on some key features of our proposals on group supervision”, McCreevy said speaking at the Eurofi conference in Nice. “We envisage the introduction of a European dimension in the national mandate of supervisory authorities, with a view to ensuring that they will have due regard to the interests of policyholders in other Member States when carrying out their rights and duties under the new regime”, he added.

 

With regard to the banking sector, McCreevy announced that the Commission will propose amendments to the CRD on 'colleges' at the end of September.

 

The Commission will also publish a White Paper on financial stability to be published next year on early intervention tools for dealing with ailing banks. Early intervention schemes in the White Paper. Measures differ across Member States, and these differences have the potential to complicate or impair efficient cross-border crisis handling.

 

For the colleges of supervisors that should facilitate the supervision of cross-border banking groups the objectives should include:

• consistent application of requirements within banking groups.
• no duplication of requirements and information requests.
• Colleges should also be effective in dealing with group-wide issues.

 

The powers of the consolidating supervisor should be reinforced for two supervisory aspects, namely capital add-ons for subsidiaries (Pillar 2) and prudential reporting requirements.

 

“Maybe at some point in time in the future we will have some form of EU level supervision for the largest financial institutions”, the Commissioner said, “but I don't believe we have the necessary conditions today for such a fundamental change.”

 

Full speech 1

Full speech 2

© European Commission