Statement to the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament - November 2025

Madam Chair, 

Honourable Members of the Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) Committee, 

Thank you for the opportunity to be present before you today to outline EIOPA’s main achievements over the past year and our focus for the future. 

Europe stands at a pivotal moment where restoring growth calls for a renewed commitment to reforms, long-term investment, and a truly integrated Single Market. The Savings and Investments Union (SIU) is central to these efforts but its success rests on trust in resilient, well-supervised financial systems. This lies at the very heart of EIOPA’s mandate for insurance and occupational pensions. 

The insurance and pensions sectors are long-term investors with a vital role to play. In 2024, European insurers held over 10 trillion euros in total assets, while IORPs managed nearly 3 trillion. Today, over 92% of Europeans hold at least one insurance policy, and IORPs serve more than 74 million members across Europe – a number expected to grow. 

These figures reflect not just scale, but purpose and potential: to protect individuals and businesses and drive economic growth. 

Yet, growth and competitiveness cannot be sustained without financial stability, market resilience, and consumer trust. This requires sound regulatory and supervisory frameworks designed to foster the Single Market. EIOPA supports the SIU’s objectives and believes its success hinges on several levers. 

First, resilience. The ongoing Solvency II review has advanced this goal, incorporating many of EIOPA’s recommendations to strengthen the insurance sector’s ability to withstand shocks and to support long-term investment. EIOPA takes note of the political decision taken by the Commission to introduce capital easing measures as part of this process. The combined effect of Level 1 and Level 2 changes may increase risks for individual companies, potentially undermining sector-wide resilience. The supervisory community is conscious of this context and will continue to act within the possibilities of its mandate, in particular when it comes to risk management by insurers. We also welcome the mandate to monitor insurers’ investment flows and to assess whether the capital released will be actually used to fuel the European economy. 

There is no certainty that this will occur, as part of the funds could be redirected to dividends or invested outside the EU. The reduction of capital charges for equity investments alone could enable insurers to invest almost twice as much in equity as they do today. Yet, quite often the constraint lies in the shortage of suitable EU investment opportunities. With more investment opportunities in EU, parts of the portfolios currently invested outside the EU could be prudently reallocated at home. 

In a period of heightened uncertainty and lower safeguards, transparency is critical. Where significant capital relief is introduced, enhancing disclosure of firm-level stress-test outcomes – as it is already standard practice in banking and the UK insurance market – can strengthen market discipline, governance, and public trust. Yet, the European insurance industry has fiercely opposed even limited data disclosure after stress tests, therefore protecting weaker companies from external scrutiny and limiting transparency around potential vulnerabilities. If we introduce more risk into the system, we must ensure transparency about where those vulnerabilities lie.

Second, stronger supervision. EIOPA has long advocated reinforcing supervisory tools with effective enforcement measures to ensure consistent outcomes across Europe. Insurance supervision remains largely national, and where a national supervisor is unable or unwilling to act, an effective European mechanism must exist to step in. We strongly support granting EIOPA’s Board of Supervisors targeted intervention powers to act directly in specific cases. This is essential for the SIU’s success and should be a key policy measure within the same package. 

More importantly: effective supervision is key to foster trust and to encourage citizens to engage with capital markets. And here the lever is large. Europeans are among the world’s best savers: unlocking even a fraction of the funds sitting in bank deposits and channelling them into financial products offering value for money could provide vital capital for innovation and growth while offering citizens returns, protection, and retirement income. Consumer trust is key to enabling this shift.

The appetite to invest exists. Some argue Europeans are risk-averse; yet almost 10% of euro-area households have invested in crypto-assets. The issue is not the lack of risk appetite but the availability of suitable products and incentives. With the right ones, citizens are willing to invest. Our role is to create the conditions for that confidence to grow through simple and safe products that deliver value for money, transparent supervision and consistent protection across Member States. 

Let me now turn to a crucial imperative for the insurance and pensions sectors: the protection of citizens and businesses – and the provision of peace of mind. These sectors have an unparalleled role to play in narrowing growing gaps. 

On pensions, the call for action is clear. Europe faces a profound demographic shift, and straining pension systems. Half the population is now older than 45. By 2050, the working-age-to-pensioner ratio is expected to fall below 2:1. Already today, above 20% of seniors in Europe are at risk of poverty. 

That is why the way forward must involve thoughtful reforms and a shift in how we approach retirement savings in order to address the growing pension gap. In this regard, EIOPA supports the focus on pensions in the current EU debate around capital markets and has provided technical input to support the development of supplementary pensions. 

While Pillar I remains, of course, essential, EIOPA has consistently advocated improving the uptake of supplementary pensions through auto-enrolment, value for money and effective supervision. These principles underpin our proposals for the reviews of the PEPP Regulation and IORP II Directive. 

Specifically on PEPP, we proposed measures to enhance the current basic PEPP and make it scalable. This can be done through streamlined advice, simpler default options, and an EU certification – a “EuroPension” label – to signal fair, value-for-money products across the Single Market. 

Another critical challenge we need to address is the persistent gap in natural-catastrophe insurance protection. Over the past decade, losses from natural catastrophe risks – including floods, droughts, wildfires, and earthquakes – have risen sharply, yet only 25% of those losses have been insured. We have been working to foster better data collection and sharing to measure emerging risks, raise consumer awareness of exposures, and promote simple, comparable product standards that drive insurance uptake across the EU. 

Collaboration across the financial sector is equally vital. Banks require reliable risk labels for mortgages, while insurers need comparable data to underwrite coverage effectively. By joining forces, we can close data gaps and deliver concrete solutions for citizens and businesses.

Working together and thinking systemically also strengthen our ability to address other protection gaps, such as related to cyber and health risks. Addressing these gaps demands the same rigor: raising awareness, implementing policies that strengthen mitigation and adaptation, ensuring the insurance and reinsurance sectors offer affordable and valuable coverage, and establishing an EU-wide public-private mechanism to address extreme tail risks. 

Let me now conclude. Advancing the SIU and the Single Market requires coordinated action across the entire financial ecosystem. EIOPA remains committed to this vision, serving as a trusted adviser by providing evidence-based insights and fostering cooperation with Co-legislators, supervisors, and stakeholders. 

We will soon publish our new Strategy towards 2030, which aims to strengthen the European supervisory community, ensuring it remains responsive to a dynamic environment. 

Going forward, we remain open to dialogue and ready to support this Committee with technical input. 

Thank you. I am now ready to take any questions you may have.