The European Commission - one of the organs of the European Union - has proposed to push back the application date of the Insurance Distribution Directive by seven months to 1 October 2018 and hopes to persuade the other elements of the EU to sanction its proposal.

EU countries are still required to transpose the IDD into their national laws by the original date on 23 February. In order to align the application dates, the commission is also preparing to postpone the application of two 'delegated regulations' (bits of EU law that apply in all member-states without any supporting legislation from national parliaments) that will stem from the directive, whose aim is "a greater transparency of insurance distributors with regard to the price and costs of their products, better and more comprehensible product information and improved conduct-of-business rules, in particular with regard to advice," and a massive increase in regulatory standardisation on that topic between EU states.

The proposal's text is provisional, with the final text to come out shortly. It says that the effective date of 23rd February is fixed in Article 42 of the IDD and that on 21st September last year the commission 'adopted' (the meaning of this word is unclear) two 'delegated regulations' (the EU's equivalent of orders promulgated in accordance with an Act as delegated legislation) to supplement the IDD with regard to rules to do with 'governance' and the overseeing of products for insurance undertakings and insurance distributors (the POG regulation) and to information-related and conduct-of-business rules that the EU wants to impose on the distribution of insurance-based investment products (the IBIP regulation). The financial sector has argued that it might need more time to make the necessary technical and organisational changes for which these delegated regulations call and the EU has listened.