On Thursday 31 October 2019 the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) published member state responses to its February 2019 ‘Recommendations for the insurance sector in light of the United Kingdom withdrawing from the European Union’. The responses are available on EIOPA’s website.
The French regulator, Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution (ACPR), has indicated in its response that it does not intend to comply with EIOPA’s Recommendation 6, relating to insurance policies originally sold in the United Kingdom by UK insurers to policyholders now resident/established in France.
On 8 November 2019, ACPR published a further statement on its website regarding affected policyholders.
Further information on the French Brexit Ordinance referred to in ACPR’s statement of 8 November 2019 is available on the ACPR website.
As per the ACPR statement, in order to make use of the French Run-Off Ordinance UK insurers must have appropriate passports to carry out business in France in place at UK exit day.
The PRA and FCA encourage firms to seek legal advice and consider any risk arising from the ACPR approach to affected policyholders as soon as possible. This should include consideration of whether you may wish to have any passports to carry out business in France in place prior to exit day to enable the use of the French Run-Off Ordinance.
Further information on the PRA’s approach to processing passporting applications can be found on the Passporting webpage.
When considering passporting applications, insurers should look to submit applications only for classes of business they have previously written or currently write. Firms wishing to apply for passports should complete all relevant questions on the cross-border services notification form, along with the additional information required under paragraph 3.2.1 of the Decision on the collaboration of the insurance supervisory authorities (EIOPA-BoS-17/014). Further information is available at the link above.