Regulatory cost faced by UK insurance brokers – January 2020

finance||0financial-markets-and-institutions||38regulatory-economics-2||0
Practice area:Finance | Financial markets and Institutions | Regulatory economics
Client:British Insurance Brokers’ Association
Published: 21 January, 2020
Keywords:

London Economics conducted for the British Insurance Brokers Association (BIBA) in late 2019 a study on the regulatory costs faced by UK insurance brokers and key findings of the study were published on 21 January 2020 in BIBA’s 2020 Manifesto. The most striking finding of the study was that, according to insurance brokers having responded to a survey, in small firms more than one in every four (26%) full time equivalent staff are employed to attend to regulatory requirements. The research also showed that 71% of respondents to the survey believed that the indirect regulatory costs had increased compared to 2016, with 21% of respondents indicating that indirect costs had increased by more than 25%. The analysis also showed that direct regulatory costs borne by insurance brokers in the UK are among the highest of all the 23 jurisdictions examined, ranking third. The research found that the UK was the second most costly among all 23 jurisdictions researched; far more expensive than key competitors such as France, Germany, New York or Japan. In fact, direct regulatory costs in the UK are two times (small firms) to five times (large firms) higher than the direct regulatory costs averaged across all other jurisdictions covered in this study.