The Bermuda Monetary Authority has announced its latest moves towards achieving equivalent status with other leading insurance regulators.

The BMA said yesterday it had formally established the standards and applications process for permitting the use of insurers' internal capital models to assess the regulatory capital that would be required for such companies.

The Authority has also developed new proposals for applying greater disclosure requirements to Class 4 and 3B insurers. These enhanced transparency requirements would apply to both audited general purpose financial statements as well as statutory filings.

In a statement, the BMA said both developments advance the Authority's preparations for assessments to determine broad equivalence of its insurance framework under regimes of other major international jurisdictions, such as Europe's Solvency II Directive.

"The Authority has worked for some time on enhancing our insurance framework with the view to obtaining equivalence status with other leading regulators in the world," BMA CEO Matthew Elderfield said.

"These latest developments are a significant milestone for the Authority, and show that we are making steady progress towards this important goal for Bermuda." To support these developments, the Authority has published two market communications; Guidance Notes "Standards and Application Framework for the Use of Internal Capital Models for Regulatory Capital Purposes" and "Consultation Paper on Disclosure and Transparency".

Both the draft legislation and Consultation Paper are available for download on the Authority's website: www.bma.bm.

The Authority welcomes comments from the insurance industry and other interested persons on the proposals set out in the Consultation Paper. Comments should be sent to the Authority's policy@bma.bm email no later than 31st August 2009.

Enquires relating to internal capital model applications or questions on the Guidance Notes should be directed to the Authority's Actuarial Services Unit via email to Brant Kizer at bkizer@bma.bm.