Speaking in the Telegraph, Flight said that as only 12% of UK insurance exports are to the EU, Brexit could "save the costs and complexity of Solvency II for 88% of insurance exports".
He also believes that "post 2018, under Mifid II, equivalent regulations will ensure EU market access".
Flight added that half of the main regulations in the last two decades "have been driven by the anti-financial services, anti-Anglo Saxon EU agenda where UK opposition has been in vain".
He cited examples such as the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive, bonus caps, short-selling bans, Solvency II and Mifid II.
However Hugh Savill, Director of Regulation at the ABI, hit back, stating "the suggestion that UK insurers could do business without taking account of European regulation is pie in the sky".
Savill said this suggestion would mean that "British insurers who wish to operate in Europe, the largest insurance market in the world, would have to run two solvency regimes, two capital requirements, two different sets of bureaucratic regulation".
He believes this would also make it harder for markets to make comparisons between UK and other European insurers, leading to UK insurers "being undervalued and less attractive to do business with".
Savill continued: “If the UK was to seek equivalence status with the European regime, it would mean having to establish our own parallel system; this would have to be very similar to the European regime but we would have no chance of influencing that European regime.
“Solvency II is far from perfect, but it is based on a thoroughly British approach to prudential regulation. This is why the UK did not oppose it, but engaged constructively in its negotiation.”
