Eine BaFin-Regulatory Sandbox für die deutsche Versicherungsaufsicht

Digitalisation is leading to new, technology-based business models in the insurance industry. Dealing with these requires balancing the potential benefits with the possible risks for consumers, investors, and the functioning and stability of the entire financial system. Financial services regulators worldwide have recognized this and are responding to digitalisation with different supervisory strategies. Regulatory sandbox solutions, which allow certain business models to be tested under the supervision of the supervisory authority, and innovation hub solutions, which primarily allow specific supervisory advice, are dominant. The author examines whether it is necessary for the German financial services supervisory authority, BaFin, to introduce a regulatory sandbox in addition to its innovation hub solution to ensure effective supervisory activity and the protection of policyholders' interests as well as the German insurance market. To this end, the author uses the example of a hypothetical telematics tariff offering in private health insurance to compare the German innovation hub solution with the Financial Conduct Authority's pioneering regulatory sandbox solution in the UK regarding which approach is better suited to reducing existing legal uncertainties and improving the supervisory understanding of innovation. Following the examination of the necessity of introducing a BaFin regulatory sandbox for insurance supervision, the author further examines whether such an introduction would be permissible under current law or at least under proposed future law. The work aims to stimulate discussion on the instrument of the regulatory sandbox in insurance supervision law and economic supervision law as a whole, targeting both practitioners and academics connected to insurance and economic supervision law.