L'invention du contrôle des risques dans les organismes d'assurance

The European Union is completely redesigning the system of prudential supervision of insurance institutions as part of the Solvency Directive II. During its implementation, the Directive, which can be compared to the Basel II prudential standard, was analysed above all in terms of actuarial techniques. But this reform is also raising serious sociopolitical issues. By establishing new sectoral control of risks, insurers – the real inventors of the system – are demonstrating the political scope of the theory of auditability formulated by Power. Indeed the insurance institutions that co-defined the security standards to which they are going to be subjected attach more importance to promoting their compliance with the new prudential rules than to the efficiency of the system implemented. The potential consequences for the sector are therefore substantial. Insurance is actually running the risk of complete finaciarisation, to the detriment of its specific mission to protect. It could also seize this opportunity to reinvent its diversity. The context of the economic crisis, which led government officials to take an interest in regulatory systems, underscores the Foucaldian paradox of prudential superivision of the insurance industry: it is a matter of making security technology secure. In the context of financial post-Modernity, risk control is repoliticizing and is playing the role of confidence-booster in order to save the liberal model from its own sins.