Regulation of the Insurance Industry

The chapter aims to explain the main sources of insurance legislation in Europe. The first paragraphs offer the overview of the evolution of the insurance legislation, as the current structure of legislation in the insurance industry is the outcome of a long process of European harmonising started with the Treaty of Rome in 1957. As explained in the chapter, the European approach of discipline of the insurance industry had been first developed over three issues of directives (freedom of establishment, freedom of services and home country control), and more recently developed in a definitive set of regulations in four macro-areas: customer protection and distribution of insurance products, risk control and corporate management, supervision of insurance undertakings and pension provision.