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
request by an insured for indemnification by an insurance company for loss incurred from an insured peril. ...
Form of state rating legislation that allows each property/liability insurer to choose between using rates set by a bureau or its own rates. Individual states regulate insurers and approve ...
1890 law prohibiting monopolies and restraint of trade in interstate commerce. The Sherman Act was strengthened in 1914 with amendments known as the Clayton Act that added further ...
Premiums paid with funds that are not borrowed from life insurance. It is important to ascertain the finance charges and the costs/benefits of such a transaction. ...
Arrangement, often funded by life insurance, to continue an employee's salary in the form of payments to a beneficiary for a certain period after the employee's death. The employer itself ...
Termination of a plan. Under federal tax law, a plan can only be terminated for reasons of business necessity. Otherwise, prior employer tax deductible contributions under the plan are ...
Amount of insurance remaining on a ceding company's books, net of the amount reinsured. ...
Actuarial procedure used to determine the annual rate of return at which annual benefits would have to be gained from the cash value life insurance policy in order to equal the annual ...
Maintenance of Social Security benefits at current dollar or percentage levels. Social Security benefits are indexed to the Consumer Price Index and rise in tandem with the Index. A benefit ...
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