Though the Pre-Budget Report held few surprises for the insurance industry, the forthcoming Summit could have great significance, finds Ellen Bennett.
Wednesday November 7: write it in your diary. In the Pre-Budget Report and Comprehensive Spending Review, the Chancellor finally named the day for the Insurance Summit that has been promised since May.
The Chancellor’s speech on Tuesday held few other surprises for the insurance industry: the two pence cut in corporation tax and £800m for flood defences had been heavily trailed.
The summit, though, has the potential to be extremely significant. Details remain sketchy: the Treasury is not currently able, or perhaps willing, to say where it will be held, what will be discussed or, crucially, by who.
But it is known that Lord Levene will present the summit with a report on the work of the review he has been leading, on the modernisation of the wholesale insurance market.
What will he have to say? Industry observers have already noted that, since Gordon Brown moved from Number 11 Downing Street to Number 10, the working group has been extremely quiet. And in Lord Levene’s home territory of Lloyd’s, modernisation remains some way off, with the market falling markedly short of its targets at the end of the third quarter.
Perhaps the working group has been toiling behind closed doors, and will have some revelatory announcements and ideas to present to the summit.
Either way, if the market is to meet its, and the government’s, aspirations for reform, it is vital that this summit is more than just a talking shop. Positive action must be decided on, and then taken, if reform is ever to be more than a dream.
Lord Levene’s working group has a meeting scheduled for the week after the summit – on November 14 – which suggests, promisingly, that it will be acting on the findings of the day. It is up to the rest of the industry to make sure their voices are heard.
