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
An exception to section 101 (a) (1) OF THE INTERNAL REVENUE CODE tax-exempt Status Of the DEATH BENEFIT in a life insurance policy where the transfer of the interest in the policy by the ...
Insurance company that does not utilize the rates and policies of a rating bureau. ...
Policy that pays a fixed dollar amount for each day the insured is confined to the hospital. This method of payment is in contrast with most other medical expense insurance that reimburses ...
Capacity of parties to an insurance contract to understand the meanings of their action in order for the contract to be valid. ...
Employer's obligation to fund a pension plan for the time period when employees were qualified to participate but the plan was not yet established. For example, a pension plan is ...
Record of losses, whether or not insured. This record is used in predicting future losses and in developing premium rates based on expectation of insured losses. ...
Special type of charitable remainder trust (CRT) under which a designated beneficiary (cannot be a charitable beneficiary) receives an annual fixed income. The grantor of the trust is ...
Insured, or an applicant for insurance, with lower expectation of incurring a loss than the standard applicant. For example, an applicant for life insurance who does not smoke can usually ...
Life insurance under which an insured receives the face value of a policy if the individual survives the endowment period. If the insured does not survive, a beneficiary receives the face ...
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