Following the example of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer scrutinizing the U.S. insurance industry, European regulators are investigating their own insurers.

On March 17, the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority started a formal inquiry into "financial engineering" techniques, notably so-called finite reinsurance, parallel to those used by some U.S. companies to help corporate clients conceal their published earnings. The finite reinsurance has become a contradictory issue in the insurance world since U.S. regulators began investigation focused on the use of these contracts by American International Group Inc., prompting the recent resignation of Chief Executive Maurice Greenberg.

Separately, European Commissioner Neelie Kroes, heading the European Union’s antitrust watchdog, said she wants to begin inquiries into Europe’s financial-services sector, including insurance sold to industrial and corporate groups, later this year. Testifying to the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, Ms. Kroes said, "We want to conduct investigations in sectors where competition doesn’t seem to work," bearing in mind corporate insurance and retail banking,together with gas and electricity utilities.

Despite the increased interest in the field of insurance industry shown by Mr. Spitzer in the U.S., Ms. Kroes in Brussels other European regulators, including the French and German national supervisory bodies, haven’t yet announced any desire to start similar investigations.