As we think back to 1994, and the step forward the IAIS represented for cooperation and coordination on insurance oversight, I think we can all marvel at how modest, relative to today, were the demands and the aspirations at that time for international standard-setting. On the one hand, insurance had been a global business for well over a century.
On the other, the idea that an insurance company could be at the center of a global financial meltdown would have seem farfetched. Likewise, even after the financial crises in developing countries in the late 1990s, few people believed that the world’s largest and wealthiest economies could all be threatened with ruin by a truly global crisis.