Insurance companies turn on the beacon on the spread. All together, they hold over 15% of the BTPs in circulation and precisely for this reason, they underline "the strong risk that a significant widening of the spread entails in the short term on the financial statements of the companies and which, if it persists, is inevitably destined to be reflected on the returns paid to our 20 million customers”. Not only that: "A large part of the insurance savings supported the public debt".
These are the words with which the number one of ANIA, Maria Bianca Farina, opened the report to the annual assembly of the association. “In the regulatory framework – added the president – this circumstance must be taken into account for reduce the harmful effects for savers by a substantially rigid application of the accounting and prudential rules which force companies, even in extraordinary and transitory situations, to accept losses when the securities are not actually traded”.
The increase in the spread between the BTP and the Bund caused by the political uncertainty of recent months should therefore not be underestimated.
In the course of the report, Ania has also provided some numbers which show that insurance companies contribute 195 billion to the real economy. "Investments in corporate bonds - Farina explained - amounted to 138 billion, while those in debt funds, shares in unrelated companies and infrastructure works reached 57 billion, or about 8% of reserves".
Overall, at the end of 2017 investments by Italian insurers reached 850 billion euros, a figure that corresponds to "50% of GDP and almost two thirds of these are against traditional life insurance policies, policies that have yielded, on average, 3%", underlined the president who then clarified: "in addition 300 billion are invested in Italian government bonds”.
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By virtue of these data, in order to support the real economy, according to the president of ANIA, "it would be particularly useful to allow institutional investors, such as the insurance companies with their separate accounts, to purchase, with the tax benefit for the customer, Pir with a higher illiquidity component for the financing of unlisted companies and infrastructures".
Farina then requested, on behalf of the Italian insurance companies, ""growing attention from the Government" to EU legislation in order to enforce the requests of the Italian market which fears "competitive disadvantages and enormous implementation costs". The reference is in particular to the revision of the Solvency2 and the need to modify the mechanism, volatility adjustment, which cushions the effects on capital needs of the excessive volatility of the spread of a single country compared to the European average. According to the president, this mechanism, which should also be effective for Italy, "is not effective today".
As far as internal politics are concerned, Ania asks the Government "a uniform tax treatment for all members of the supplementary formsboth collective and individual. Farina recalled that whoever, to date, decides to join a collective fund has the right to a tax deduction of 3.615 euros a year, "a deduction that is not available to those who subscribe to an individual policy".
