The European Union is to put back by six months the deadline for member countries to enshrine strict new capital requirements for insurers into their law, drawing criticism from the industry over the reduced time available to adapt to the final version of the rules.

The European Union is to put back by six months the deadline for member countries to enshrine strict new capital requirements for insurers into their law, drawing criticism from the industry over the reduced time available to adapt to the final version of the rules.

European insurers, on the front line of the region's sovereign debt crisis because of their big exposure to distressed Italian bonds, will be forced to share losses with customers and rely on regulators to be lenient if Italy reneges on its debt.

Insurers are seldom fazed by technical complexity or heavy expenditure, yet even they have flinched when confronted with the intricacy and high implementation costs of Solvency II, a set of new capital rules for the European insurance industry.

Insurers are seldom fazed by technical complexity or heavy expenditure, yet even they have flinched when confronted with the intricacy and high implementation costs of Solvency II, a set of new capital rules for the European insurance industry.

European insurers are financially robust and unlikely to require injections of fresh capital, barring an Italian sovereign default or break-up of the single currency area, analysts said.