Ratification by the Luxembourg parliament of legislation allowing insurance companies to compete with banks and investment funds has been delayed. The proposed legislation is sponsored by Luxembourg’s insurance regulators and builds on a circular letter published at the end of last year which enabled insurance companies to pitch for management of pension fund assets.
Last year Luxembourg’s Association of Bankers promoted legislation that created SEPCAVs and ASSEPs in order to get into the DC business. “The moment you get into ASSEP, you start getting into insured benefits,” says James Ball, managing director of JBI, adding that many insurance companies saw the potential to compete with investment managers and the new legislation is essentially a pensions law for insurance companies.
According to another observer the new law is more polished than last year’s, which was rushed through parliament. “The insurance law should be a couple of steps ahead of the existing law and I believe it has received quite a lot of opposition from the bankers. They have their law and they don’t want another,” they say. Claude Wirion of the commissariat and one of the law’s architects wouldn’t say whether it competed with the bankers’ law, only that the parliament will ratify the legislation by the autumn.

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