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
Size of the losses used as a factor in calculating premium rates. For example, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics studies the number of days lost by injured employees per million ...
Coverage that is renewable at the option of the insured, who is not required to take a medical examination. Regardless of physical condition, the insured must be allowed to renew the policy ...
Branch of knowledge dealing with the mathematics of insurance, including probabilities. It is used in ensuring that risks are carefully evaluated, that adequate premiums are charged for ...
Mathematical premise stating that the greater the number of exposures, (1) the more accurate the prediction; (2) the less the deviation of the actual losses from the expected losses (X - x ...
Quality of investments of insurance companies. State insurance regulators establish rules for company investments. Authorized investments vary, depending on whether a company is a life ...
Contractual obligation that requires one party to the contract to fulfill its obligation before another party to the contract is required to fulfill its contractual obligation. For example, ...
Contracts of reinsurance in which expected income from investments is a major component of the UNDERWRITING process. Also, the ultimate liability of the reinsurer is limited. The reinsurer ...
Person by whose life the duration of an insurance policy, estate trust, or gift is measured. This person is generally referred as the insured in an insurance policy. ...
Premium paid by an insured business to an insurance company from which the company subtracts charges for the cost of putting a policy on its books, premium taxes, and profit. The remainder ...
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