The amount of financial regulation being generated by the European Union has now reached a point where the rule-making seems out of control to Danish pension and insurance providers, according to their industry association.
Insurance & Pension Denmark (IPD) made the comments yesterday, as it launched five proposals including a call for EIOPA’s “increasingly detailed” guidelines to be opposed by the Danish government and Financial Supervisory Authority.
IPD said rapidly-increasing EU regulation currently accounted for more than 90% of all new regulation of financial companies in Denmark, and now took up more than 3,500 pages for insurance and pension companies alone.
Including proposals in the pipeline, the page count was more than 6,000, the group said.
Kent Damsgaard, chief executive officer of IPD, said: “It is as if the good will has run out of the system.
“Of course, the purpose is both important and necessary, but it seems to our companies that the amount of regulation has got out of control,” he said.
On top of this, IPD said, the industry was finding EU regulation to be increasingly taking place via EU authorities, and therefore without a political mandate at all.
“Politicians need to know the consequences of major regulation, and when it is unclear what we have to deliver and not deliver, that’s when the regulation has become too detailed,” Damsgaard said, adding that no one benefited from that.
What was wanted was regulation that was more targeted than the rules that were being presented, he said, adding that IPD would now work systematically on this topic.
The five proposals IPD has put forward are headed:
- New EU regulation must always be based on impact analyses
- Fewer, but better rules
- Openness about EU regulation – regardless of where it takes place
- Stop detailed European regulation without a political mandate
- A strong Danish imprint on European financial supervision
However, the association also said EU regulation in the financial area had in many ways created better consumer protection, a more robust financial sector and strengthened competition, in Denmark as well as elsewhere.
“At the same time, it is a clear strength to have common European rules in the areas where, by and large, the countries have the same problems and needs,” the industry body said.
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