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
In insurance, individual with rightful possession of an insurance policy, usually the policyowner. ...
Procedure for offering reduced auto insurance rates to drivers with good records, and imposing higher rates on bad drivers. Typically, premiums are weighted under a system that assigns ...
Account established by the insurance company specifically for beneficiaries of a life insurance policy where the beneficiary has the choice of leaving the death benefit on deposit in the ...
Early life insurance that provided benefits only to survivors who lived to the end of a certain period of time. In the mid-17th century, Lorenzo Tonti, an Italian, devised a scheme to raise ...
Claim (lien) of the pension benefit guaranty corporation (pbgc) against an employer's assets upon termination of a pension plan for the amount of an employee's unfunded benefits. ...
Situation in which parties agree to take part in a structured settlement negotiation through the guidance of a neutral expert. By participating in this process, the parties do not agree ...
Means of projecting the costs of pension plans on a level basis over a specified future period of time. The actuarial value of each employee's future benefits to be paid at retirement is ...
Additional Living Expense Insurance is a type of coverage present on several types of Homeowner’s Insurance that reimburses additional costs caused because of the insured’s ...
U.S. government agency (formerly the Atomic Energy Commission) responsible for regulating the nuclear energy industry. The commission also provides supplemental insurance for nuclear ...
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