Should the UK create a captive insurance regime with lighter regulation to boost competitiveness?

There's a version of this vote that reads as consensus and a version that reads as fatigue, and the true story is closer to the latter: yes prevailed by the narrowest of margins, carried less by conviction than by the enthusiasm of a small cohort of younger voters and the reluctance of everyone else to mount much resistance.

The clearest signal sits at the ends of the age range. Those under 35 backed the plan almost to a person, the instinct of a generation more comfortable treating regulatory competition as a straightforward economic tool rather than a risk to be feared, while the over-65s leaned the other way, wary of stripping out Solvency UK protections in the name of competitiveness. In between, the 35-64 bracket that makes up most of the chamber essentially shrugged, splitting close to evenly and leaving the final call to the margins.

That generational shape echoes the post-Brexit argument about regulatory divergence more broadly — whether cutting loose from EU-style capital and conduct rules attracts capital or simply invites the next mis-selling scandal. Insurance-industry-lite rules for captives are a niche instance of a very familiar British argument about who regulation is really protecting.

A win, then, but not a mandate: reverse a handful of the middle-aged undecideds and this verdict flips.