The purpose of this article is to offer un understanding of the issues that the issuance of the International Reporting Financial Standard (IFRS) 4 - Insurance contracts has determined on the Romanian and on the EU insurance market, in order to evaluate the insurance contracts. According to IFRS 4, an insurance contract can be recognized as such only if it has a significant insurance risk, but, this type of contract cannot be assessed before it has been separated into different components, each element being evaluated in accordance with the description in the article. The authors are trying to explain the importance of the connection between insurance contracts risk, evaluated according to IFRS 4, and solvency rate, one of the important performance indicators of the insurance societies. Establishing solvency presumes a very good knowledge of the risk the insurance company is exposed to, as well as of the asset requirements to limit the risks. This was also the purpose for which the available and the minimum solvency rate calculus methodology have been used, reaching the expected conclusions presented at the end of the article. The new solvency requirements for the risk - based insurance sector represents one of the EU priorities in this field because creating a unique market imposes the necessity of elaborating a coherent and efficient system to monitor the solvency.