EIOPA Cuts Reporting Burden as It Presses for Simpler EU Insurance Rules

Key Takeaways

• Reporting Requirements Are Shrinking: EIOPA has cut quarterly reporting templates by 26% and annual templates by 30% for solo undertakings under the revised Solvency II Directive, with reductions of 36% and 44%, respectively, for small and non-complex undertakings.
• Guidelines Are Being Streamlined: EIOPA reviewed 25 sets of Guidelines and shortened them by around one-third, while saying new Level 3 measures should be introduced only where there is a clear supervisory need.
• Simplification Is Becoming a Long-Term Principle: EIOPA wants burden reduction embedded permanently into regulatory and supervisory work rather than treated as a one-off exercise.
• EIOPA Wants Earlier Involvement in EU Lawmaking: The authority is calling for earlier, more structured involvement in the legislative process to help assess the need, scope and feasibility of technical mandates.
• Consistency Across the EU Remains Central: EIOPA argues that simpler rules should not come at the expense of supervisory convergence, financial stability, consumer protection or the integrity of the Single Market.

Deep Dive

EIOPA has cut quarterly reporting templates by 26% and annual templates by 30% for solo undertakings under the revised Solvency II Directive. For small and non-complex undertakings, the cuts run at 36% quarterly and 44% annually.

Those numbers are the most tangible evidence yet of what the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority means when it talks about simplification. In a follow-up published September 28, EIOPA took stock of work already underway and laid out where it intends to go next, from fewer guidelines and less frequent stress tests to earlier involvement in EU legislation and closer coordination among national supervisors.

The premise is not deregulation. EIOPA is explicit about that. It wants to strip away administrative burden and unnecessary complexity without weakening financial stability, consumer protection or the ability of supervisors to see what is happening in the market.

That leaves the harder question of deciding which requirements are necessary and which have simply accumulated.

EIOPA has already reviewed 25 sets of Guidelines and shortened them by around one-third. New Level 3 measures are being approached on the same terms: they should be introduced only where there is a clear supervisory need. A new proportionality framework has been implemented under Solvency II, while the authority says existing reported data should be used wherever possible before firms are asked to provide more.

The same thinking has reached stress testing. EIOPA is making bottom-up stress tests less frequent while strengthening its top-down analytical capabilities. Inside the authority itself, the working-group structure has been simplified in an effort to improve efficiency and tighten coordination with national supervisors.

None of these changes is particularly dramatic on its own. That is partly the point. Regulatory complexity rarely arrives as one enormous obligation. It builds through another template here, another guideline there, another request for information that may already exist somewhere else in the system. EIOPA’s approach is increasingly aimed at that accumulation.

It also wants the exercise to last. The September update describes simplification as a continuous, long-term principle for regulatory and supervisory work rather than a project with a finish line.

There is a boundary around that ambition. EIOPA does not want simplification at EU level to produce greater fragmentation among member states. The authority argues that the effort must be conducted from a European perspective, with convergent rules and supervisory practices taking precedence over national specificities where those differences would fracture the Single Market.

For firms operating across borders, the logic matters. A shorter rulebook offers limited relief if the same rule is applied differently depending on which national supervisor is reading it.

The Problem Starts Before the Rule Is Written

EIOPA’s next set of proposals reaches further upstream, into the way European legislation is made. The authority wants earlier and more structured involvement in the legislative process, giving it a greater opportunity to help co-legislators assess whether technical mandates are needed, how broad they should be and whether they can be implemented in practice.

Timing matters too. Where obligations from separate legislative files overlap, EIOPA argues that implementation should be appropriately phased rather than allowing several sets of requirements to descend on firms at once. The individual obligations may each be defensible. Their collision can still create unnecessary operational pressure.

EIOPA also wants robust impact assessments to accompany new legislation and reviews of existing rules, weighing the benefits against the costs and resources required for implementation.

The authority is carrying the same argument into data reporting. It wants more integrated, digital-friendly reporting that serves undertakings and supervisors alike, alongside greater coherence between horizontal EU legislation and rules written specifically for insurance and occupational pensions.

Consumer regulation is another target. EIOPA favors legislation built more around outcomes and principles and less around prescribed processes and extensive documentation requirements. The objective is not to lower the standard expected of firms, but to put greater weight on what a rule is supposed to achieve rather than prescribing every step taken to get there.

Supervision presents a different version of the same problem. EIOPA argues that clear rules, applied consistently and enforced effectively, are themselves a form of simplification. A company operating across the Single Market gains little from simpler legislation if supervisory expectations change substantially at the border.

The authority therefore wants more structured dialogue with industry to identify where complexity appears in practice and where existing legislation already leaves room to address it, including through proportionality and clearer supervisory expectations. It is also pressing for closer coordination among supervisors from the beginning of supervisory action, backed by shared tools and expertise.

There is a temptation in any simplification drive to measure progress by pages deleted, forms abolished or requirements struck from the books. EIOPA’s September update points toward a more demanding test. It is asking whether Europe can make regulation easier to comply with and supervision more predictable while preserving the protections those rules were written to provide.

The reporting cuts show that some of that work can be counted already. What comes next will depend increasingly on something harder to measure: whether Europe can stop unnecessary complexity before it enters the system.

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