Legal counsel from the American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA) testified this week on negotiating objectives for a U.S.-U.K. trade agreement.
“APCIA expresses strong support for negotiating a mutually-beneficial U.S.-U.K. trade agreement on financial services. The [United States and the United Kingdom] are home to the world’s top two financial centers and share similar attitudes towards harnessing the insurance sector to foster economic growth and job creation. These negotiations are a unique opportunity to strengthen the financial markets in both countries and establish shared international leadership in the financial services industry at a time of significant change in global finance and international trade flows,” Steve Simchak, vice president and chief international counsel at APCIA, said in his testimony before the Office of the United States Trade Representative and the Trade Policy Staff Committee .
Simchak said the outcome of the Brexit negotiations would have an impact on the bilateral U.S.-U.K. negotiations.
Simchak said a U.S.-U.K. financial regulatory dialogue would benefit market participants as well as clients and investors. There is the potential for more rigorous cooperation between the two without undermining prudential outcomes. Regulatory coordination should allow each government to support the other’s regulatory systems in multilateral standard-setting processes, he added.
Further, Simchak said, a U.S.-U.K. trade agreement could build on the already open financial services markets in the two countries by updating international insurance trade commitments. The updates should better reflect global supply chains and the way modern businesses engage in international trade. Also, he said, an agreement must include commitments to allow insurers to store and process data in the location that best suits the interests of their policyholders.