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
Coverage for a lender who has accepted property on the floor of a merchant as security for a loan. If the merchandise is damaged or destroyed, the lender is indemnified. The policy is on an ...
services provided in an employee benefit plan such as a pension plan. An employer provides the clerical staff to operate the plan, in effect acting as custodian. The trustee provides ...
Loss occurring by accident or chance, not by anyone's intention. Insurance policies provide coverage against losses that occur only on a chance basis, where the insured cannot control the ...
Automatic protection for an insurer against losses that exceed a predetermined loss limit. This reinsurance may be subdivided into three primary types: excess of loss, catastrophe loss, and ...
Disability in which a wage earner is forever prevented from working at full physical capability because of injury or illness. ...
Individual who has met professional standards of the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Labor for signing the actuarial reports required by the Employee Retirement Security Act ...
Nonparticipating life insurance under which the first few annual premiums are smaller than would be the case under a traditional nonparticipating policy. While the maximum amount of these ...
Statement regarding an insured's retention of low-severity risks because they are not catastrophic, and can be absorbed without having a dramatic effect on the financial structure of a ...
The definition of special acceptance explains how two insurance institutions work together for the benefit of the masses. In order to define what special acceptance means, we must ...
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