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
Coverage for small groups that cannot meet the underwriting standards of true group insurance. Even though the franchise insurance covers an entire group, individual policies are written on ...
Two basic kinds of policies sold by health insurance companies: medigap insurance (medicare supplementary insurance); and medicare wraparound ...
Plan under the employee retirement income security act of 1974 (ERISA) for employees who are less than 50% vested. An employee must be permitted to buy back retirement benefits lost because ...
Difference between the yield on earning assets and the cost of interest-bearing liabilities. ...
Coverage for less than one year. Insurers generally charge higher rates for short-term policies than for longer term insurance, such as an annual policy, because of the need to recoup ...
Powers of an agent delegated by an insurance company and shown in the form of a document. ...
Chance that an event will occur. The foundation of insurance is probability and statistics. By pooling a large number of homogeneous exposures an insurance company can predict with a given ...
Method of pricing property and liability insurance. It uses charges and credits to modify a class rate based on the special characteristics of the risk. Insurers have been able to develop a ...
Provision in workers compensation insurance under which an employee who incurs an injury in another state, and elects to come under the law of his home state, will retain coverage under the ...
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