Rob Esson is an Oxford educated UK Chartered Accountant who spent 21 years at the NAIC, primarily on international issues. An IAIS “Distinguished Fellow”, he was responsible for supporting various international accounting and solvency work streams at the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). He was Vice Chair of IAIS Accounting & Auditing Working Group, and previously Chairman of the IAIS Insurance Contracts Subcommittee throughout the life of that committee (2005-11), advising the IASB on how insurance accounting standards should be promulgated. He was also active in the Insurance Groups Working Group, the Common Framework for the Supervision of Internationally Active Insurance Groups (or ComFrame), designing a future global solvency regime for insurers, and the basic capital requirement and global insurance capital standards, and was heavily involved in drafting of many Insurance Core Principles.
He was responsible for Joint Forum work (a grouping of Insurance, Banking and Securities regulators around the world). At the Joint Forum he chaired the work stream on mortgage insurance issues and was a key member of the work team that developed the Conglomerate Principles, a member of Longevity Risk Transfer work stream, the Point of Sale Disclosure work stream, and co-chaired the Asset Encumbrance work stream. He also co-chaired the evaluation of the Conglomerate principles, and worked on intra-group support, asset securitization reports, and credit risk management.
He was the IAIS representative on the IASB Insurance Working Group, the IASB Financial Instruments Working Group, the joint FASB/IASB Financial Crisis Advisory Group, Expert Panel on Financial Instrument Impairment and Financial Institutions Advisory Group, and developed strong relationships with the IASB and FASB members and staff.
