I recently wrote about the Life Insurance Conference held in Washington, DC last month. This week I was both an attendee and guest speaker the 13^th Annual Future of Life Assurance Conference held at The Guoman Tower in London, UK. It's amazing that these two conferences were held on opposition sides of the Atlantic Ocean and addressed many of the same session topics and themes. Insurance is certainly a global industry!

This year's conference was attended by many of the leading carriers and CEOs in the UK and across Europe.The sessions included a strong lineup of keynote speakers and panel discussions from carriers such as Legal & General, Skandia, Aviva, Standard Life, Friends Provident, LV=, Zurich UK, Barclays and Scottish Life.

Sessions topics addressed a variety of business and regulatory issues including:

• Ensuring a profitable future
• Key priorities in regulation
• The future of advice
• The impact of the RDR on distribution
• Bancassurance
• Gaining control of the customer relationship
• Revitalizing product offerings

In addition, Oracle speakers (Glenn Lottering and myself) led specific sessions on gearing up for Solvency II and speeding product development through adaptive rules-based systems.

The main themes that played throughout many of the sessions included: change is here, focusing on customers, the current economic crisis has been challenging and the industry needs to get back to the basics and simplify - simplify - simplify.

Additionally, it is clear that the UK Life & Pension markets will be going through some major changes as new RDR regulation related to advisor fees and commission and automatic enrollment are rolled out in 2012

Roger A.Soppe, CLU, LUTCF, is the Senior Director of Insurance Strategy, Oracle Insurance.