French brokers want ‘avalanche’ of new European rules to stop

An association of French brokers has urged the European Parliament to stop imposing new rules on the insurance industry over fears that regulation risks making it less competitive and threatens the broking market.

Brokers union Planete CSCA argued that the next EU Parliament, which will be elected in June, should instead reassess existing legislation and work to simplify the compliance burden that could hamper the sector.

Planete CSCA, which represents over 30,000 small and mid-sized independent brokers in France, said that the next Parliament must pause “the avalanche of new rules that apply to the insurance sector” and engage in an “evaluation of the texts currently in place in order to measure their actual enforcement and impact”.

Once those two tasks are performed, the association said the authorities should evaluate whether existing regulatory goals, such as consumer protection and financial stability, can be simplified so they better achieve their goals.

More importantly, perhaps, the trade union wants European institutions to go back to their original role of devising general principles that are subsequently refined and implemented at national level by member states.

President of Planete CSCA Bertrand de Surmont warned that decisions taken at European level may threaten the survival of France’s broking market.

“The accumulation of European regulatory constraints, their transposition into French law, as well as the lack of chronological predictability and the costs to our companies, are adding to very big changes linked especially to the development of new technologies,” he wrote. “All of that in a context of global competition that is increasingly aleatory and disruptive.”

Planete CSCA lists 21 pieces of legislation that have been approved by the European Parliament since 2016 that apply to brokers.

Twelve of them are aimed directly at the insurance industry, including the Solvency II directive, the Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD) and the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA).

The other nine, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the recently approved European AI Act, are rules that apply to many companies, including insurance intermediaries.

The association notes that the “avalanche” of new rules shows no sign of coming to an end, with new money laundering, anti-corruption and data-sharing rules on the cards that brokers will also have to be mindful of if they are finally approved.

European voters will choose a new Parliament on 9 June. France holds 81 of the 720 seats up for grabs.

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