The China Insurance Regulatory Commission (
CIRC) has said that regulatory loopholes must be plugged, and that supervision must be improved to overcome the agency’s shortcomings.
The commission aims to create a stronger regulatory system for insurance companies with stronger supervision over firms’ shareholder ownership structures and the authenticity of their funds.
“The insurance regulatory system needs to deeply reflect and needs to thoroughly take stock and sort things out, locate and correct the shortcomings which exist, earnestly perfect the regulatory system and improve its methods,” it said in a statement.
In the past few years, the CIRC’s operations have been plagued by several problems, such as lax enforcement of rules and systemic loopholes, reports
Reuters.
Among the changes the CIRC wants to implement are closer monitoring of where insurance funds are invested and a higher bar for overseas investments of insurance funds.
Insurance companies must also be more careful in developing their products, as penalties for violators will be harsher.
The statement is the latest among a series of releases by the CIRC as it reorganizes and picks itself up from the recent chain of events surrounding a government crackdown on excessive risk-taking by insurers, culminating in the removal of the CIRC’s chairman amid corruption allegations.
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