Internal affairs

The collapse of the world's financial markets has given Solvency II internal models a new dimension. But how easy will it be to wrestle a uniform set of standards out of 27 different regulatory cultures? Blake Evans-Pritchard reports

The past 18 months have been hard on financial institutions the world over. One or two big names have collapsed under the weight of cash-strapped credit markets, inadequate risk models and inefficient management teams. Practices that had worked perfectly well prior to August 2007 suddenly failed as markets seized up, highlighting serious deficiencies in the system that had been concealed by a buoyant insurance industry.

In September last year, one of the world's largest public insurers, American