Involve private individuals in Welfare to reduce public spending in various sectors, from health care to pensions, through the management of natural disasters, and lower taxes on long-term savings products to help insurance companies finance businesses. These are the main requests addressed to the political world by Aldo Minucci, president of ANIA, who this morning in Rome opened the annual assembly of the national association of insurance companies.
HEALTH
Firstly, according to Minucci, “it is time to define an equitable and more sustainable architecture for the Italian healthcare system. The experience of some countries, such as France and Germany, demonstrates that the goal can be achieved through an integrated system between the state and private individuals. To this end, it is necessary that public services are defined with certainty and that citizens are encouraged to purchase protection through mutual or insurance coverage".
The "Health pact" under discussion in recent weeks, therefore, "should also provide that some services, for example prevention, specialist visits and diagnostics, are free only for people in conditions of economic vulnerability, while the others they should bear the cost – added the number one of ANIA -. This would significantly reduce the expenditure incurred by the State and limit long waiting lists. At the same time, more space would be given to the intervention of supplementary healthcare forms, for which the relative tax treatment should be made homogeneous, making insurance policies equal to funds and health insurance funds".
SUPPLEMENTARY SECURITY
On the pension side, Minucci asks to "provide for an autonomous tax deductibility for accessory guarantees, in such a way as not to affect the ceiling intended for supplementary pensions". With regard to the increase in the tax rate on financial income taken at midnight today, "the increase of half a percentage point of taxation on returns accrued by pension funds is not consistent with the need to encourage workers to join, especially young ones".
NATURAL DISASTERS
In the last ten years, the Italian State has sustained, on average, “annual costs of approximately 3,3 billion euros for compensation for catastrophic damages – continued Minucci -. Costs covered through recourse to general taxation, with regulatory interventions approved after the occurrence of the events". To reduce the burden on public coffers (and increase insurance margins), the number one of Ania proposes a "coverage for the Italian housing stock that assigns a role to the private sector in the management of catastrophic risk", even if, in Italy , "the preconceived positions on this issue continue to prevail, such as those which lead to the assimilation of catastrophe insurance to a new tax on the house".
SAVINGS
On the savings front, however, Minucci is asking for the taxation on long-term products to be reduced to 12,5%. "The insurers have declared their willingness to invest a portion of the assets in alternative forms of employment, whether they are aimed at financing businesses or infrastructure works", confirmed the President of ANIA, recalling however that the new rules on the prudential Solvency2, in force since 2016, require companies that invest in the long term "a higher capital requirement, unless the assets are matched by insurance products of similar duration".
For this reason, Ania supports the need “to encourage savers to purchase long-term savings products. For these products, which should have an initial duration of more than 5 years, taxation should be reduced to 12,50%," continued Minucci, specifying that similar incentives have already been introduced in France.
As for the government provision that allows insurance companies to finance companies directly (measure contained in the competitiveness decree), Minucci evaluates the innovation positively, "even if the provision that the recipients of the loans must necessarily be identified by a bank raises doubts". a constraint that "could reduce the interest of those insurance companies that intend to adopt internal structures for assessing and assuming credit risk".
SOLVENCY 2, ROSSI (IVASS): INSURANCE SHOULD NOT RECAITALIZE
Also present at the Ania meeting was Salvatore Rossi, president of the insurance company supervisory institute, who announced that "with the impact assessments available so far, Solvency 2 should not require an average recapitalization of the business system European insurers. It is also necessary for companies to take advantage of the transition year and a half for the introduction of Solvency 2 at the beginning of 2016 to adapt their business strategies to the new regulatory framework, defining the desired risk levels and the consequent capital management plans ”. In particular, small and medium-sized companies "will do well to timely calculate and manage the new capital absorption of their balance sheet", concluded Rossi.
Attachments: Report-President-Minucci-Assembly-ANIA-2014.pdf
