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
Federal agency that regulates commerce across state lines. The ICC does not oversee insurance, which is subject to regulation by the states according to Public Law 15, McCarran-Ferguson ...
Provision in an umbrella liability insurance policy under which the policy will pay those losses that come within the retention limits of the primary policy, but the primary policy cannot ...
Market in which buyers dominate trading and force financial asset prices up. ...
Individual or organization that is a potential purchaser of an insurance product. ...
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. ...
Person who uses personal property such as an automobile with permission of an owner. For example, for insurance purposes, someone who uses an automobile with the owner's permission would be ...
Combination property, liability, and business interruption policy. It is usually written to cover expenses of small and medium size businesses resulting from damage or destruction of ...
Insured plan under which the insurance company agrees to provide the insured with a series of benefits on a benefits-paid basis plus administrative services on a stipulated-fee basis. This ...
Federal legislation passed in 1974 that mandated that legislators in all states that are in receipt of federal funds for health care review and approve any planned capital expenditures to ...
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