The government threw the City a weighty tome of summer reading the day before MPs left Westminster for the summer when it published the long-awaited Financial Services and Markets Bill on 20 July.

The unprecedented chaos of the last week, as the government imploded, left the country bewildered and many struggling to keep up with the whirlwind pace of events. As the dust settles, at least for a brief interlude, we find many new faces in key roles affecting the City and the insurance market, writes David Worsfold, contributing editor.

The eyes of UK insurers may be firmly fixed on the push by the Treasury to persuade the Prudential Regulation Authority to loosen some of the strict rules inherited from Solvency II but elsewhere in the world the debate is moving on. In doing so, it has opened a fault line between US insurers and their European counterparts.

The general insurance and long-term savings industry is making significant progress in setting transparent net zero targets but needs to “take the hand brake off”, says Andy Briggs Chair, CEO, Phoenix Group and chair of the Association of British Insurers’ Climate Change Committee.

The World Economic Forum in Davos may have moved from the depths of winter to the spring but its mood has rarely been gloomier, writes Contributing Editor David Worsfold.

The announcement in this week’s Queen’s Speech that there will be a new Financial Services and Markets Bill to make the UK a more attractive place to invest by “cutting red tape” comes hard on the heels of the Treasury’s announcement at the end of last month of its proposals for post-Brexit reform of Solvency II.