30 October 2012

Insurance Europe: Addressing the demographic challenge in the insurance sector

This document presents a report of the Follow-up Seminar of the Insurance Sectoral Social Dialogue Committee (ISSDC) on Addressing the Demographic Challenge in the Insurance Sector. The seminar was held as part of the project of the same theme and was co-financed by the European Commission. The goal of the seminar was to follow up on the Joint Statement on the demographic challenge in the insurance sector agreed in January 2010, to discuss reaction to the ISSDC booklet on Combating the demographic challenge in the insurance sector launched on 14 June 2012, and to exchange further good practice examples.

The seminar also received a message from Vladimir Zuberec of the European Commission, who underlined the importance of the issue of demographic change and highlighted that the Liaison Form meeting in May 2013 will focus on these challenges. According to Mr Zuberec, the insurance sector showed it was very active on demographic issues in 2012 by conducting the ISSDC project. He invited ISSDC members to present their initiative at this meeting. Mr Zuberec also indicated that a number of other sectors have worked on the issues of demographic change and active ageing, with the hospital sector planning to launch common guidelines on active ageing in December 2013. The education sector has also included this on their work programme and a project completed in the railway sector in 2010 was focused on employability in the face of demographic change.

Tina Weber from ICF GHK (the consultant responsible for assisting with the drafting of the booklet) reflected on the launch conference, which in her view demonstrated the positive joint approach and efforts to tackling these important challenges, not only at European level but also in the companies and national social partner agreements featured in the document. She also expressed her hope that further practices could soon be added to the booklet, as the conference already indicated that further initiatives exist which could not be featured in the current edition.

Full summary report

Best practice booklet

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