’We’re not asking for deregulation, which is a very different thing,’ says trade body’s director of public policy
Nafisah Hussain, the International Underwriting Association’s (IUA) director of public policy and advocacy for London market insurers, joined the trade body as legal services executive in 2020, before working her way up her current role – which she began in 2025.
And, speaking to Insurance Times, her message to the regulator is simple, even if she admits its implementation may not be.
“My request to the regulator, if I had one, would be please engage with your trade associations,” she says.
“There’s a lot of value we can add and it doesn’t always have to be in the form of a formal round table. Sometimes it can be a simple informal conversation about upcoming developments, when we’re expecting them and how they will that land.”
The Consumer Duty example
Hussain notes the implementation of Consumer Duty since 2023 as a clear example of what happens when that conversation between regulator and industry representatives does not take place.
She describes years of what she calls “reverse lobbying” as the most frustrating impact, with organisations like the IUA having to communicate with the FCA to explain the unintended consequences of rules that were never designed with the commercial wholesale market in mind, but captured it anyway.
“We understand the duty and the benefit to retail customers,” she says. “The reason it’s been challenging, in particular for our members, is that those rules have had unintended consequences for us. We’re going back to say, look, here’s the unintended consequence. Please change it. Here’s why it doesn’t work.”
This month, almost three years on from the Consumer Duty coming into force, the FCA announced a new round of reuglatory simplifications for the insurance sector, with non-UK business removed from the scope of the duty and overlapping disclosure requirements axed.
“Every time one of those drops comes, every time a new consultation is released, someone has to sit down and analyse what does this mean for our company,” she explains
“You’re trying to navigate all of these documents and the rules still aren’t fully final. We really don’t want another consultation beyond this one, because it’s exhausting.”
“If we’d had a conversation around Consumer Duty before it came out, we could have quickly told [the regulator] that there were going to be an unintended consequences. Do you really mean to bring commercial wholesale into this?”
Proportionality, not deregulation
The London market, she says, does not want to tear up the rulebook and embrace anarchy – but it does need regulation that is suited to the risks it is actually managing.
“We’re not asking for deregulation, which is a very different thing,” she says. “The London market is effective, it’s great, but proportionality is key.”
She suggests that the recent political desire for deregulation across the globe has become shorthand for something more nuanced – a frustration with duplication, with reporting requirements that create non-value add work and with rules that do not adequately distinguish between an insurer writing personal lines and a specialist commercial wholesale firm writing complex global risks.
The IUA’s response to the PRA’s third-country branch consultation, she says, present an example of what constructive engagement can achieve. Reporting requirements as originally proposed would have placed an onerous burden on members – some of whom could have been forced to amend their regulatory operating status from a branch of a company to a subsidiary almost overnight.
Hussain says: “Sometimes it is just about asking, do you really need this, or would it be sufficient to have that on a yearly basis? Because that’s ultimately when the risk exposure might present itself.”
The timing problem
Beyond the content of regulation, Hussain raises a frustration that she suspects will resonate across the market – the habit of dropping significant regulatory material over holiday periods.
“Please don’t drop your regulation over the holiday season,” she asks.
“You usually see things coming up just before a bank holiday, or right at Christmas, or over the summer – and most professionals working in insurance have families, they have children. It’s difficult to engage people at that time and that makes a big difference.”
The point, while simple, connects to a broader argument about the regulator’s desire for valuable feedback and implementation.
A condensed or poorly timed consultation period does not just inconvenience compliance teams, says Hussain, but degrades the quality of that feedback, producing less well-calibrated rules and generating further, potentially unnecessary consultation further down the line.
The opportunity ahead
While Hussain is clear on what she believes the industry’s regulatory challenges are, she is ultimately optimistic.
The IUA recently held a round table with the FCA at the beginning of the year where members gave candid feedback on upcoming proposals. The association has quarterly catch-ups with both regulators too, and there is, she says, a genuine sense that the direction of travel is improving.
She also points to the incoming leadership at both the FCA and the PRA as an opportunity to both reset and to educate about what the commercial wholesale market is – and how it differs from the domestic retail sector the regulator more instinctively understands.
“We’re not saying that we’re special. What we’re saying is that there’s a distinction between what we’re doing and what domestic retail general insurers are doing. That’s really important for the regulator to understand.”
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