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
Funds paid by an insurance company associated with the normal costs of doing business other than the costs of claims payments. ...
Act that makes the liability cost for cleanup joint and several. Even if a party is only partially responsible for losses inflicted, that party may be liable for the payment of the total ...
Management philosophy developed by W. Edwards Deming, the thesis of which is the continuous improvement in quality through research in customer satisfaction and the empowerment of ...
Authority of states to tax the insurance companies they regulate. States levy income taxes, real and personal property taxes, and special levies, the most important of which is a premium ...
Crime against the state for which an officer of the state can bring legal action. Society is harmed by an individual breaking the laws of the state. Usually there is no statue of ...
Insurance for which premiums are charged according to the size of the face amount of the policy, so that the greater the face amount, the lower the cost per $1000 unit of insurance. ...
Securities that derive their value from other financial instruments that are used by the insurance company to hedge its bets on which direction the market is moving. For example, cattle ...
Same as term Occurrence Basis: coverage, in liability insurance, for harm suffered by others because of events occurring while a policy is in force, regardless of when a claim is actually ...
transfer of money from or an employer-sponsored pension or other qualified plan into an INDIVIDUAL RETIREMENT ACCOUNT (IRA) with out paying tax on the distribution. transfer of money from ...
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