As I kill time waiting for my flight home, I notice that there are two articles in my reading pile continuing the rumblings of federal regulation of insurance.
This Insurance Journal article doesn’t contain new information, but adds to the mutterings:
Federal regulation in the United States — something that most other nations already have — is expected, at least initially, to function in tandem with the existing state regulatory framework rather then supplant it, Lloyd’s of London’s chairman Peter Levene told Reuters Tuesday.
"This is a halfway house," Levene said of a proposal devised by U.S. Treasury officials earlier this year that would create a federal office for insurance regulation.
"It is gaining quite a bit of traction, and if it happens in the next year, we would regard that as good progress," Levene added.
The near failure of insurance giant American International Group Inc. has propelled the likelihood of federal regulation of the industry.
Another article, over at Business Insurance, reports on similar noise from a different venue, including this notable quote:
In the current climate, Ms. Semaya said she anticipates new regulations providing for "not just an optional federal charter, but more federal regulation than we ever asked for."
And, of course, I’ve been at a CAS meeting this week, where quite a bit of time was spent discussing coming changes from the globalization of accounting standards, expected influence of Europe’s Solvency II scheme, and developments in enterprise risk management…all of which paint a climate which would be more efficiently served by a single, centralized regulatory agency, rather than the chaotic collection of 50 state, 1 District, and 6 territorial regulatory offices we get to deal with today.
There are certainly interesting times ahead of us, I think.
