FSA and the ratings agencies exert pressure on insurers. ABI and Lloyd’s defend the market from political influence. It is essential that the Radar project be kept separate from all these lest it become used as a tool for regulatory and political purposes. That is not to say that individual customers may not use the information for such purposes but this must be a matter for them, knowing that the information they are working with was not designed to influence that decision. The Radar project makes regulator management and political suggestions, but only after the information has been presented and explained.
Within the past few years, the Radar project has been invited to
contribute knowledge to FSA for use in inspection work, to help develop catastrophe models to enable the ratings agencies, to align with two major law firms so that insurer vulnerabilities could be exploited and was once owned by ABI.
The Radar project could maintain independence under these circumstances, but doubts would be created.
We know very well the competitive nature of insurance as a business. This is essential to its proper functioning. But is not the role of Radar to provide advantage to one customer over another. There will be times when the news we present is damaging to one more than another or provides one with an opportunity that another cannot access. We deal with this by imagining we are talking to the model insurer working towards sustained profitable underwriting and the defence of the common law as the provider of a stable market platform.