The preliminaries are over. The initial skirmishes have been conducted. Now the battle over the review of Solvency II is starting to get serious.

French president Emmanuel Macron has given a major boost to the European Union’s drive to make sustainable finance a core element of all institutional investment strategies including Solvency II.

 The UK media was generally optimistic after the agreement with the EU over a Brexit transition timescale. The Association of British Insurers (ABI) said they were pleased to see the Bank of England take a pragmatic approach to regulation during the implementation period regarding passporting rights in the UK.

 This week, Lloyd’s announced an aggregated market loss of £2bn for 2017-the first loss for six years.

 This week, Prudential headlined with its intention to demerge the UK & Europe business (M&G Prudential) from Prudential plc (Asia and US), and to sell a £12bn annuity portfolio to Rothesay Life.

A popular feature of all Insurance Investment Exchange seminars is the opportunity to capture the views of participants through interactive voting, and the results revealed that the anticipation of a change in central bank policies is widely anticipated.