EXCLUSIVE: Global compliance database to go international?

The UK-based Association of Insurance and Risk Managers in Industry and Commerce (Airmic) launched its long-awaited global compliance database earlier this month.

And while it is initially only available to Airmic members, the association’s technical director Paul Hopkin (pictured) has told StrategicRISK that “the broader marketing of this database is still under consideration”.

Hopkin explained that the database’s development costs were borne entirely by insurance information specialists Axco and, as such, the developer now “wished to seek a wider market”.

“Axco is looking to make the database available beyond UK-based insurance buyers,” he said.

“We’re supportive of that and we’ll talk to Axco about how that should develop.”

Hopkin told SR that the creation of a single database for insurance buyers was a great achievement that “we’d be delighted to see become international”.

“We have deliberately not excluded anybody from involvement in terms of answering questions that have been put to us,” he said.

Airmic would be “willing to discuss this with other regional risk-management organisations”, such as the Pan-Asia Risk & Insurance Management Association (PARIMA), Hopkin said.

“We’d be more than happy to explain the idea behind this development and more than happy on Axco’s behalf to see this become developed and enhanced data as time goes by,” he said.

The Insight Risk Manager database aims to help risk managers understand the regulatory requirements for their global insurance programmes. At present, it enables users to view information such as the legal framework for non-admitted insurance, reinsurance details and information about the regulator in 30 countries.

Although insurers and brokers have maintained their own databases for many years, these have tended to focus upon their own compliance requirements rather than those of the policyholder, Hopkin said.

“The target audience of this database is insurance buyers,” he said.

“Insurance companies and carriers have their own approach to compliance that is driven by their own business model and also by where they have licences.

“The buyer needs much more accessible and objective information and that is what this database is all about.

“It is not skewed in anyway by paying regard to the particular licences that a company has.”

Hopkin said the database was easy to access and negotiate, and “pretty well internationally applicable”.

“Although there may just be a few modifications that will need to be done… [and] the information may not be 100% transferrable between countries because of a few possible minor issues,” he added.