Overview

The European Commission has adopted a new regulation providing for a block exemption of certain types of agreements in the insurance sector from the EU’s general prohibition on practices restrictive of competition (referred to here as the BER).

In force since 1 April, the new BER replaces the previous insurance block exemption, which expired on31 March 2010.

While the previous regulation provided for a block exemption for four categories of agreements from the ban on anti-competitive agreements, the new BER only continues to exempt two forms of cooperation specific to the insurance sector, namely agreements relating to joint compilations, tables and studies, and co-(re)insurance pools, but not agreements on standard policy conditions and agreements on security devices.

In consideration of the fact that the previous - as well as the newly-adopted BER - deal with some important business practices, the recent legal developments are of exceptional importance for insurance companies, associations, brokers and customers active in the European market.

In practice, the new BER will raise many new and sensitive questions. Stakeholders, like insurers, reinsurers and brokers, will have to deal with a regulatory environment where the European Commission and national competition authorities have already announced that they will intensify their monitoring of the insurance sector and will not hesitate to act whenever they observe anti-competitive behaviour in the market.

The following Q&A is intended to provide an introduction to the new BER and answers to some of the questions it raises.

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