Aggressive auditing by regulators is exacerbating compliance risk, warns Zurich

Changing regulations and aggressive auditing by regulators are increasing compliance risk for global corporates, says Zurich head of customer, marketing and middle market, François Villette.

Ensuring a company’s multinational insurance programmes are effectively transferring risk and that it falls within the legal boundaries has become more challenging, says Villette.

He said: “It is difficult for risk managers at global corporates to manage so many different risks with regulations constantly changing.

“This has put compliance issues at the forefront of the agenda for most risk managers and, therefore, we need to make sure our clients are compliant wherever they are in terms of coverage, tax and regulations.”

Villette said the insurer had given more focus on supporting mid-market clients in recent years in addition to large global corporates.

The insurer launched MyZurich at the start of 2012 to help large corporate clients and their brokers manage international insurance and risk engineering programmes. A new version was launched in November 2014 that makes it easier for clients and brokers to navigate the insureds’ data on claims, risk assessments, policies with Zurich, access to Zurich’s Multinational Insurance Application (MIA) and the insurer’s risk engineering expertise.

Villette added: “Risk managers always need information quickly and for them to have access to such a tool is an advantage when managing their programmes.”