IAIS

The International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) was established in 1994 and is headquartered at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland. Its membership comprises insurance supervisors and regulators from more than 200 jurisdictions, representing the bulk of the world's insurance premium volume. The IAIS functions analogously to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) for banking and IOSCO for securities, completing the trio of sectoral standard-setters that feed into the Financial Stability Board (FSB) agenda.

The IAIS's flagship output is the Insurance Core Principles (ICPs), a comprehensive framework covering licensing, corporate governance, risk management, capital adequacy, conduct of business, and group-wide supervision. ICPs are used by the IMF and World Bank in Financial Sector Assessment Programs (FSAPs) to benchmark national regulatory regimes.

After the 2008 global financial crisis, the IAIS expanded its remit toward macroprudential concerns. Key initiatives include:

• The Common Framework (ComFrame), finalized in 2019, which sets supervisory standards for Internationally Active Insurance Groups (IAIGs).
• The Insurance Capital Standard (ICS), a risk-based group capital standard adopted in December 2024 after a multi-year monitoring period, intended to serve as a global minimum for IAIGs.
• The Holistic Framework for systemic risk in the insurance sector, adopted in 2019, which replaced the earlier designation of Global Systemically Important Insurers (G-SIIs); the FSB suspended G-SII identification in 2022 pending review of the new framework.

The IAIS also coordinates on emerging risks including climate-related financial risk, cyber resilience, and the regulatory treatment of insurtech. It operates by consensus, and its standards are not directly binding — they take legal force only when implemented by member jurisdictions through domestic law, such as the EU's Solvency II directive or the NAIC model laws in the United States.