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
Maximum limit of liability of an insurance company for a particular claim or kind of loss that is applicable in general to all such claims or losses. This maximum limit of liability is ...
Share of a variable dollar annuity paid to an annuitant as an income payment. ...
Provision in a property, liability, or health insurance policy stipulating the extent of coverage in the event that other insurance covers the same property. ...
Type of employee savings plan under which an employee may contribute up to a specified percentage of the salary on an after-tax basis and the employer matches the employee's contribution up ...
Measure used in the retrospective rating method for workers compensation insurance. A factor is applied to the incurred losses during the rating period in question in order to generate a ...
The term mutually exclusive defines an instance when the occurrence of a specific event makes the emergence of another event impossible. Then, two or more things can be described as ...
pool that contains various reinsurance companies with each sharing reinsurance contracts on a pro rata basis as they are submitted to the pool. market that operates much like the New York ...
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 ...
Act first passed in 1962 that permits the self-employed individual to establish his or her own retirement plan. This individual can make nondeductible voluntary contributions and ...
Have a question or comment?
We're here to help.