March 22 (SeeNews) - The Bulgarian financial regulator said that eight external auditors have been selected to review the assets of Bulgarian insurance and reinsurance companies as at end-2016 in a follow-up to asset reviews that looked at the state of affairs as at end-June.
International auditor Grant Thornton has been appointed to review the assets of 11 Bulgarian insurers, while BDO and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) will review the assets of 5 insurance companies each, the Financial Supervision Commission (FSC) announced on its website on Tuesday.
The Bulgarian units of international auditors Deloitte, KPMG, HLB will review the assets of 4 insurers each, while Ernst&Young (EY) has been appointed to review the assets of 3 insurers.
France’s Mazars has been appointed to review the assets of one Bulgarian insurer.
In February, the review of the assets of Bulgaria's pension funds and the balance sheets of the insurance and reinsurance companies, as well as the stress tests of insurers and re-insurers showed that the Bulgarian insurance and pension insurance sectors are stable.
The insurance sector remained above 100% of the capital requirements, as the insurance balance sheet review showed an aggregated Solvency Capital Requirement (SCR) ratio of 154% and an aggregated Minimum Capital Requirement (MCR) ratio of 308% for the solo entities before the impact of the consistency procedures, the regulator said at the time.
For thirteen companies, the total available own funds to cover SCR and/or MCR as at June 30 was insufficient. Those companies had a total MCR deficit of 25 million levs ($13.7 million/12.8 million euro), and total SCR of 50 million levs.
The pension funds’ assets review and insurers' balance sheet review as at June 30, 2016 were performed between July 15 and the end of January 2017. The information on the outcome of the reviews was provided by independent external reviewers and was summarized by international consultancy Ernst&Young.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)