Global reinsurers ask EU for mutual market access with Britain post-Brexit: Report

Global reinsurers have written to the European Commission (EC) to ask it to ensure mutual access between British and European Union reinsurance markets after the UK leaves the bloc due to worries about market disruption, according to extracts from a letter seen by Reuters.

Britain and the EU recently started talks on the terms of their divorce in March 2019.

Brexit risks an end to so-called passporting rights, through which financial institutions are able to sell their services across the EU without locally regulated operations.

Reinsurers such as Munich Re and SCOR technically do not need passporting rights to operate cross-border in the large marine, aviation and transport sectors.

However, without regulatory regimes in Britain and the EU that are formally recognized as equivalent to one another, reinsurers based in Britain may have difficulty doing business in some EU markets due to differing national regulations, Reuters said citing industry sources.

Reinsurers outside Britain could also find it harder to get involved in deals led by the Lloyd's of London market.

"The UK's withdrawal from the EU raises difficult questions about the future trading relationship between the two jurisdictions," the Zurich-based Global Reinsurance Forum, which represents some of the world's largest reinsurers, said in the letter sent in April.

"If passporting arrangements for EU reinsurers into the UK and vice versa are not maintained, then national regulations will inevitably make cross-border reinsurance between the two jurisdictions more difficult and expensive."

The letter called for existing arrangements to continue under a future UK/EU trade deal, according to Reuters.

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