Banking (Victoria Falls International Financial Services Centre) (Insurance) Regulations, 2026

These regulations set the prudential regime for insurers and insurance intermediaries licensed at the Victoria Falls International Financial Services Centre. Nobody may carry on insurance business or act as an intermediary there without registration, and insurers are restricted from carrying on non-insurance business.

Governance comes first. Every insurer must maintain systems and controls for risk management and internal control, appoint people to controlled functions including an insurance risk manager, an insurance internal audit manager and an actuary, and may outsource the risk management or actuarial function only under the rules in the regulations. A risk management strategy must be established and approved, with a risk management policy and a risk tolerance statement setting out how much risk the insurer will accept.

Every insurer must conduct an Own Risk and Solvency Assessment and report on it. Capital adequacy is calculated as eligible capital against a minimum capital requirement and a prescribed capital requirement, and internal models may be used only if they pass a statistical quality test, a calibration test and a use test, are documented, and are validated and approved on an ongoing basis.

The solvency control levels are the operative part. An insurer must at all times hold eligible capital at or above both its minimum and its prescribed capital requirement. If it sees that it will fall below the prescribed capital requirement within three months, it must tell the Centre immediately, submit a short-term realistic finance scheme within one month, and within six months either rebuild capital or reduce its risk profile. If the shortfall is against the minimum capital requirement, the finance scheme is due within two months on the same six-month cure period. Holding capital above either level does not stop the Centre intervening for other reasons, such as weak risk management or governance.

Investments are constrained by admissibility rules, a requirement that assets be appropriate to liabilities, an ability-to-assess-risk test, investment restrictions and a documented investment policy. Long-term insurance business must be segregated: separate long-term insurance funds, contracts attributed to them, assets and liabilities segregated and recorded, and limits on using fund assets for anything else. Valuation rules cover matching, recognition and measurement, with separate treatment for general and long-term business.

Actuarial reporting is mandatory for the insurers that must have actuaries, the Centre may direct a special review, and it may require an actuarial report even from insurers that are not otherwise required to have one. Group insurers face rules on group structure, directions about capital resources, intra-group transactions and specific obligations on group members.

Transferring insurance business requires an order of the Centre Court, on application for a sanction order supported by a scheme report and summary, with notice to policyholders. There are further Parts on insurers in run-off and the remaining supervisory machinery.

The regulations set requirements by formula and by supervisory judgment rather than by fixed dollar thresholds, so the schedules and the Centre's rules have to be read for the actual numbers.