The Bank of England, through the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), has asked the largest general insurers in the UK to provide information about the impact of various stress tests on their businesses.
The PRA said the General Insurance Stress Test (GIST) 2017 seeks to assess the potential impact of severe events at the market level for the general insurance sector and to identify which firms would be most impacted by these events.
According to the regulator, this year’s exercise is split into two parts. The first is a defined set of natural catastrophe and economic downturn scenarios, while the second part aims to capture the exposures of general insurers to sectors of the UK economy.
The catastrophes in the first part of the stress tests include severe windstorms and flooding in the UK, a magnitude-9.0 earthquake in the Pacific north west region leading to a tsunami, a magnitude-8.0 earthquake along the San Andres Fault in California followed by a magnitude-7.0 tremor, and a series of US hurricanes of category 3 and 4 across the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.
“At a macro level, the exercise will allow the PRA to assess market resilience, to be better prepared in the event similar scenarios were to occur, and to identify the key reinsurer counterparties and jurisdictions to which the UK general insurance sector would be exposed to in those events,” the PRA said in a letter to insurance firms.
“At a firm-specific level, GIST 2017 will inform the internal model review process and the PRA’s view of a firm’s risk management systems; although it will not be used to set capital requirements.”
