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
Latin phrase meaning "overpowering force"; an unavoidable accident or calamity; an accident for which no one is responsible; an act of god. ...
Dishonest statement to induce an insurance company to write coverage on an applicant. If the company knew the truth, it would not accept the applicant. Fraudulent misrepresentation gives a ...
Technique of breaking down the various losses as a whole into useful components called subsets (strata) so that no subset is overrepresented. The result is the classification of losses ...
Legal recourse available to survivors of a person who suffers a wrongful death. Under common law, only an injured person had the right to sue for damages. If a wrongfully injured person ...
Written statements on a form by a prospective insured about himself, including assets and other personal information. These statements and additional information, such as a medical report, ...
Type of grantor-retained income trust (grit) in which the grantor retains the right to the assets of the trust should he or she die before the term of the trust expires. ...
In a mercantile open-stock burglary insurance policy, the dollar amount of coverage as required by the COINSURANCE clause. This dollar amount is the MAXIMUM PROBABLE LOSS (MPL) of ...
Trust in which assets are controlled through several generations and makes use of generation-skipping tax exemption. ...
The cancellation provision clause appears in an insurance policy to leave a door open for the insurance company or insured to cancel a policy. This type of cancellation applies in instances ...
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