European harmonisation of reporting formats

Thank you for your letter dated 3 June 2008 asking for our views on the European harmonisation of reporting formats. I am pleased to provide you with the CRO Forum answers on your specific questions. Concerning your first question; we agree that the suggested timetable should be in line with the Solvency II project. There are many good reasons for this. Firstly, the current framework differs across jurisdictions and the underlying data is not consistent as Members States apply different valuation bases. Therefore, using the current fragmented supervisory landscape as a starting point for a European wide reporting format would not be appropriate and we need the harmonization of principles that Solvency II brings.