Illiquid assets have been gaining in popularity among insurers over the last couple of years. This has been a steady trend, not a headlong rush, but it is sufficient to start gently ringing the alarm bells at the Bank of England and the Prudential Regulation Authority.

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.