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
Latin phrase meaning "without which not," signifying a legal rule in tort and negligence cases. Under this rule, a plaintiff trying to prove that an injury was a direct result of a ...
Same as term Commutation Right: right of a beneficiary of a life insurance policy to exchange the future installments due that beneficiary for a lump sum distribution. ...
Disability in which a wage earner is forever prevented from working because of injury or illness suffered. ...
Insurance company's adjusted surplus divided by its adjusted liabilities. The greater this ratio, the greater the financial strength of the company that can be used for writing new business ...
Legislation establishing the minimum education and experience level required by the state as a prerequisite for a person to become a licensed agent. ...
Events that do not have any influence on the occurrence or nonoccurrence of another event; for example, a plane crashing in Shreveport should have no influence on a plane crashing in Dallas. ...
Same as term Graduated Life Table: mortality table that reflects irregularities from age to age due to chance fluctuations in the sequence of the rates of mortality. The rates of death as ...
Fund that contains the portion of the premium that has been paid in advance for insurance that has not yet been provided. For example, if a business pays an annual premium of $1000 on ...
Table used in calculating minimum non forfeiture values and policy reserves for ordinary life insurance policies. These tables, which give minimum values that must be guaranteed to policy ...
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