‘No clue’ how to implement EU’s new AI rules: insurance lobby chief

The European Commission is just starting its new mandate – and financial sector lobbyists already have a shopping list of laws they’d like it to trim or abandon.  

Ursula von der Leyen has promised to make competitiveness the watchword of her second term in office, with economic data showing the bloc is trailing far behind performance in the US – and businesses are happy to point to EU laws they say are holding them back. 

One of them, AXA’s Frédéric de Courtois told Euronews, is Brussels’ landmark legislation on artificial intelligence, agreed earlier this year, which subjects the riskiest machine learning systems to stringent rules, with fines potentially worth 7% of turnover for breaches. 

Former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton has hailed it as a “balanced, risk-based and future-proof regulation” that made Europe a “global standard-setter in trustworthy AI”.  

But the industry still appears to be in the dark – and see it as emblematic of the EU’s over-cautious approach. 

De Courtois, who’s deputy CEO at AXA and President of Brussels based lobby group Insurance Europe, told Euronews he has “no clue how to implement the AI Act,” despite the tech being a “critical issue for the insurance industry”. 

He cited potential AI applications in pricing, claims and underwriting – but said that concerns over bias, or invasions of privacy, can be addressed via a set of principles, rather than a prescriptive 144-page law. 

“The European approach is to try to have an answer on everything, which I think is not the right way to do it,” he said, adding: “We should make sure that we do not regulate before innovating.” 

In a Wednesday speech, given just before she was confirmed by 370 votes to 282 to serve a second term, von der Leyen promised MEPs she’d streamline excessive regulatory burdens.  

She might start with a clutch of recent financial laws requiring businesses to detail the environmental impact of their supply chains, which many complain create competing or conflicting requirements.  

Climate change is “the biggest threat we face”, with insurers often left to pick up the bill for extreme weather events such as floods, de Courtois said – but he hopes the urgency of action will be tempered with “pragmatism and flexibility”.