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
Plan that provides protection in the event of legal actions resulting from charges of harassment, discrimination, wrongful termination of employment, defamation, and invasion of privacy. ...
Clause in a reinsurance policy that excludes the reinsurer's liability for losses occurring after a stipulated date. ...
Right of a policyholder in life insurance with cash value to elect a smaller, fully paid-up policy, without any further premiums to pay. The amount of the paid-up policy is determined by ...
Requirement that a retired worker can have annual earnings of no more than a stipulated amount in order to receive a full retirement income under Social Security if under age 70. There is a ...
Resulting when all possible outcomes from all the events being studied have been considered. ...
Life insurance contract that pays its owner dividends, which can be: taken as cash; applied to reduce a premium; applied to purchase an increment of paid-up insurance; left on deposit ...
Agency formed as the result of bank failures in the 1930s to insure the deposits of customers of member banks. The FDIC, an agency of the federal government, is self-supporting in that it ...
Maximum amount that an insurance company is obligated to pay all injured parties seeking recourse as the result of the occurrence of an event covered under a liability insurance pol ...
Chart showing for a group of people: the number living at the beginning of a designated year; the number dying during that year. Yearly probabilities are used in calculating premium ...
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