New Public Disclosure Requirements For Canadian Life Insurers

In Canada, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions ("OSFI"), is the federal regulatory authority over life insurers. On March 29, 2018, OSFI published its final version of a new guideline entitled Life Insurance Capital Adequacy Test Public Disclosure Requirements (the "Disclosure Guideline").  The final version follows OSFI's usual public consultation period during which insurers and other stakeholders were given the opportunity to provide comments and suggestions.

New LICAT Guideline

The disclosure requirements in the Disclosure Guideline go hand in hand with OSFI's new Life Insurance Capital Adequacy Test (LICAT) guideline for 2018 (the "LICAT Guideline") which came into effect on January 1, 2018.  The LICAT Guideline resulted from a recent overhaul of the prior Minimum Continuing Capital and Surplus Requirement (MCCSR) guideline for life insurers. The LICAT Guideline contains two different tests: simply put, a capital adequacy test