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
a large number of homogeneous exposures (in order for the deviation of actual losses from expected losses to approach zero, and thecreditability of the prediction to approach one). loss ...
Method of operation. ...
Coverage for items of property being delivered to a customer. The means of transportation covered include such common carriers as aircraft, railroads, trucks, express carrier, and other ...
Sample of n elements selected from a population of A? elements in such a way that the sample has essentially the same characteristics as the population. The random sample serves as the ...
Partnership in which family members hold all interest in the partnership. This partnership is treated as a cash flow through stand-alone entity. All sums of income and credits, as well as ...
prospective buyers of insurance classified according to various demographics such as age, sex, and insurance. risk so hazardous that it is difficult to obtain insurance coverage. ...
Detailed descriptive list made available to the survivor (s) of the insured showing: attorney, accountant, insurance agent, and location of important documents such as wills, power of ...
Statistical procedure used to calculate a premium rate based on the loss experience of an insured group. Applied in group insurance, it is the opposite of manual rates. Here the premiums ...
Legal case in which the United States Supreme Court held that pension assets are to be excluded from the bankruptcy estate of the plan participant. ...
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