Compliance in the Insurance Sector

Paolo Amato, Legal Counsel, Skandia Vita, Italy

Compliance, as an autonomous concept and with its own implementation rules, is relatively new in the Italian legal framework. The objectives that are assigned to a compliance department nowadays were, in the past, usually distributed amongst the different company departments that, in one way or another, handled issues relating to compliance with the law. For example to the legal department, which would supervise a company’s conformity with and adjustments to the law. In actual fact, verification of compliance with the law is not a totally new and alien subject for industrial multinationals operating in Italy (or for those with Anglo-Saxon/US origins operating in the industrial sector) , or for companies operating in the financial sector: indeed, despite only being implemented recently, the ‘MIFID’ European Directive, relating to markets in financial instruments, dates back to 2004, demonstrating that the culture of compliance already existed at European level .

Paolo Amato has been working for Skandia Vita since December 2005 as Legal Counsel. Before Skandia he worked for Pioneer Investments (asset management belonging to UniCredit group).

Skandia Vita belongs to Old Mutual Wealth Management, which provides advice-driven investment solutions to people in France, Italy, the UK and a number of international markets via its offshore business.