State Supervision And Regulation
Primary responsibility for overseeing the insurance industry that has rested with individual states since 1945, after Congress passed the MCCARRAN-FERGUSON ACT (PUBLIC LAW 15). In addition to supervision and regulation, states receive taxes and fees paid by the industry that amount to several billion dollars a year. State insurance laws are administered by state insurance departments that are responsible for making certain that (1) rates are adequate, not unfairly discriminatory, and not unreasonably high, and (2) insurance companies in the state are financially sound and able to pay future claims. To this end, states set requirements for company reserves, require annual financial statements, and examine company books. Each state has an insurance commissioner or superintendent who is either elected or appointed by the governor, with responsibility for investigating company practices, approving rates and policy forms, and ordering liquidation of insolvent insurers. The NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF INSURANCE COMMISSIONERS (NAIC) has drafted model legislation and worked for policy uniformity, but regulations vary widely from state to state.
Whether insurers should be regulated by the states or the federal government remains at issue, but so far insurers and the NAIC lobbying have been effective in resisting federal regulation. Nevertheless, the federal government has a profound effect on the insurance industry through its taxes and a variety of regulations.
Popular Insurance Terms
Policy underwritten on either a monoline primary insurance or monoline excess insurance basis that will allow the purchaser to increase the limits of liability coverage above that of ...
Statistical term indicating the central value of a frequency distribution, such that smaller and greater values than this central value occur at an equal rate. For example, given the ...
Inability to perform one or more important daily business duties, or inability to perform the usual daily business duties for the time period usually required for the performance of such ...
Insurance policy for which the required premium has been paid. ...
All sources of cash flow, usually stated on an annual basis. ...
Of four SEC divisions that regulates the securities markets and the participants within these markets. ...
Assumption that an employer is liable for negligent acts or omissions of employees that result in bodily injury and/or property damage to third parties if those acts are in the course of ...
Health plan that pays a flat fee for each patient it covers. ...
Contract guaranteeing that a person licensed by a city, county, or state agency will perform activities for which the bond was granted, according to the regulations governing the license. ...
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