FERMA President Peter den Dekker was among the risk managers and insurance market representatives who met at the end of June at the offices of Airmic in London to discuss an idea he has promoted: the creation of a worldwide database of regulations and tax laws for global insurance programme compliance.

All those involved in the discussion were willing to go to the next stage of dialogue. The next step is for the Airmic team, led by Helen Hayden with support from a number of the meeting participants, to put together a consultative draft of what the scheme could look like at the next level of detail. The plan is for this to be distributed in August with a view to having the next meeting in September prior to the FERMA Forum in October.

Den Dekker draws a distinction between the collection of information from around the world on local tax and regulatory issues, which are matters of fact and in the public domain, and, the work of market professionals in interpreting the data, giving advice on insurance programme design and the administrative work in compliance.
The meeting concentrated purely on the issue of the database and whether a co-operative approach was likely to result in more comprehensive and up to date information at lower cost to each of the parties involved than individual efforts.