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As the UK prepares to leave the European Union, France has been proactively lobbying for new (re)insurance business. It has offered incentives to existing UK subsidiaries to relocate. Clyde & Co said the joint statement by French financial markets regulator AMF and banking and insurance supervisor ACPR to simplify licences and speed up the process was "unusual".
The regulators said that existing insurance and reinsurance business currently supervised by UK authorities would be treated favourably in applications to relocate to France. They have also put English-speaking contacts in place to smooth the process.
Clyde & Co's Yannis Samothrakis said such moves make France "a credible alternative to more obvious contenders such as Ireland, Luxembourg and Malta".
At the same time, the UK's plans to become a hub for insurance-linked securities (ILS) are hoped to be finalised in 2017. According to Clyde & Co the move offsets some of the concerns raised over London's competitiveness following Brexit.
"We predict continued momentum in early 2017 towards finding the holy grail of an ILS regime for the UK that is fully competitive with those already offered by other domiciles," said Stephen Browning of Clyde & Co. He added that regulators will need to ensure a speedy authorisation procedure to compete with established ILS hubs.