UK insurers’ capital levels ‘are about right’

European Union rules to keep insurance companies stable will not be an excuse for regulators to ramp up capital requirements for insurers in the UK, a senior Bank of England official said yesterday.

The so-called Solvency II rules, which take effect in 2016, aim to ensure insurers such as Britain’s Prudential and Aviva hold enough capital to honour policyholder commitments even when markets turn sour.

“The PRA believes the UK industry is in a good position,” the BoE executive director for insurance supervision, Paul Fisher, told a Westminster Business Forum conference.