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
Crime against the state for which an officer of the state can bring legal action. Society is harmed by an individual breaking the laws of the state. Usually there is no statue of ...
Clause, generally found in business interruption insurance, that establishes the same indemnification basis as the coinsurance clause. ...
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 ...
Provision in almost all excess of loss reinsurance contracts under which payment is made by a re insurer of each and every loss incurred by the cedent in excess of a specified sum, up to a ...
Standard Commercial Property Floater form covering death or damage to livestock as the result of insured perils such as fire, lightning, explosion, smoke, wind, hail, aircraft, earth quake, ...
basic feature of the social security act under which benefits paid are associated with the employee's earnings that have been taxed during the employment period. ...
Cost of replacing damaged or destroyed property with comparable new property, minus depreciation and obsolescence. For example, a 10-year-old living room sofa will not be replaced at ...
Endorsement to the commercial general liability insurance (CGL) policy that provides liability coverage to an insured business for damages anywhere in the world. Policies typically have ...
Account established and administered by a state agency to finance a mandatory insurance program, for example, workers compensation insurance. ...
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