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
Life insurance on which a premium is collected on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis, usually at the home of a policyholder. The face value of the policy is usually $1000 or less. ...
Period of time an insured is sick and entitled to receive health insurance benefits. ...
Same as term Credit Card Insurance: coverage under a homeowners insurance policy in the event that a credit card is fraudulently used or altered. Fraud includes theft and the unauthorized ...
Statistical procedure used to calculate a premium rate based on the loss experience of an insured group. Applied in group insurance, it is the opposite of manual rates. Here the premiums ...
Same as term Unallocated Funding Instrument: pension funding agreement under which funds paid into a retirement plan are not currently allocated to purchase retirement benefits. The funds ...
Three types of damages can be awarded to a plaintiff: Special Damages reimbursement for out-of-pocket expenses, including medical bills, legal charges, cost of repairing damaged or ...
Correction of a contract containing a mistake in order to prevent a party to that contract from gaining from that mistake. For example, if $1,000,000, instead of the correct amount of ...
Cost computation form that assumes retirement and commencement of annuity payments on the first day of the month nearest the birthday when a retiree reaches normal retirement age. Most ...
Act that provides new funding for the Bank Insurance Fund and enhances the safety and soundness of the financial system. The FDICIA includes the Foreign Bank Supervision Enhancement Act ...
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