The EU and the USA have signed a bilateral agreement that, among other things, allows reinsurers from the USA to carry out reinsurance business with primary insurance undertakings or reinsurers in the EU.

If the undertaking-specific criteria set out in the Agreement are met, no authorisation or branch under section 67 (1) sentence 1 of the Insurance Supervision Act (Versicherungsaufsichtsgesetz – VAG) is required to carry out reinsurance business in Germany. The relevant requirements can be found in Article 3(4) of the Agreement. The reinsurer from the USA must meet certain capital requirements (“capital and surplus” of at least EUR 226 million (Article 3(4)(a) of the EU-US Agreement)) as well as certain local risk-based capital requirements (at least 300% “Authorized Control Level” (Article 3(4)(b) of the EU-US Agreement)). Additionally, among other things these reinsurers are required to submit certain declarations to the insurance supervisory authority responsible for the ceding insurer. Following the initial submission, a reinsurer from the USA must observe the continuing information obligations set out in the Agreement.

Reinsurers from the USA that have submitted the necessary documents and information by 30 June of each year will be summarised in a table. The table will only contain reinsurers that have given their consent to be included in the table. Market participants can send questions to BaFin about individual reinsurers from the USA. However, BaFin will only provide information about the submissions if the reinsurer from the USA has consented to the communication of information about the status of the submissions.

The relevant information is summarised in the guidance notice on carrying out reinsurance business on the basis of the EU-US Agreement.