State Houses '02 Insurance Focus Was Auto, Comp

By Daniel Hays

NU Online News Service, Feb. 26, 11:41 a.m. EST?The majority of state laws enacted to regulate property-casualty insurance last year focused again on the automobile and worker's compensation segments, an industry trade group reported yesterday.

The analysis of trends in new state insurance legislation for 2002 was released by the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies in Indianapolis, Ind. Officials said they had seen the same focus in 2001 and expected it to continue this year.

NAMIC's summary, which was posted online, involved 239 laws passed in 44 states.

Roger Schmelzer, NAMIC vice president-regulatory affairs said, the association identified 60 new auto insurance laws as the single largest issue trend among p-c-related laws. The survey also identifies 45 new workers' compensation laws, making this the second most common issue trend.

The two categories account for nearly half of the new p-c laws covered in the report and Ken Marshall, industry knowledge manager for NAMIC, said the trends are very similar to last year.

This year, "based on what we've seen in the past, and the legislation introduced so far this year, we don't anticipate those two will change [position]," Mr. Marshall said.

The two areas, he explained, are "magnets for legislation and regulatory proposals."

Mr. Marshall said NAMIC "did pick up on a couple of additional trends that were rather notable, comparatively speaking." He cited new laws pertaining to licensing, insurance scoring, financial standards regulation, investment tax credits and rate and form requirements.

Because the auto legislation category stands out so much, Mr. Marshall said the study has made a sub-category of traffic safety.

He said the section notes laws pertaining to driving under the influence standards, seatbelt requirements, graduated driver license standards for youth and speeding.

Additionally, the association had noticed legislation requiring carriers to provide regulators with more data on auto accidents. Other legislation he said involved "tweaking existing laws with additional prohibitions, [setting] prohibitions or conditions on adverse underwriting decisions" as well as statutes covering salvage vehicle titles, and insurance coverage that auto dealers need during test rides.

California enacted the greatest number of new laws in the survey with 15. Florida had 12.

Arizona and Colorado approved 11 each. Washington passed 10 new laws.

Minnesota and Oklahoma each approved nine new p-c laws, NAMIC said.

The organization found that there were no new significant p-c laws approved in Indiana last year. Montana and Ohio passed just one new significant p-c law each. Alabama, Delaware, Hawaii, Mississippi, New Jersey and Wyoming each enacted only two new laws, NAMIC said.

In addition to auto and workers comp, the survey identified 22 distinct issue trends. Among them:

? 18 licensure laws enacted in 15 states,

? 12 insurance scoring laws enacted in 11 states,

? 10 financial regulation laws enacted in 8 states,

? 10 laws concerning investment tax credits enacted in 7 states, and

? 10 laws regulating rates and forms enacted in 9 states.

NAMIC said its Survey of 2002 State Insurance Laws identified a number of other "important new law issue trends"?including state building codes, captive insurers, electronic commerce, fraud, mold, premium finance arrangements, privacy/disclosure, tax issues, records retention, structured settlements, telephone marketing, unfair trade practices, uniform arbitration, and uniform commercial code changes.

The report has been published for the last four years. NAMIC said the full report is a value-added service available to its members.

A summary of NAMIC's 2002 Survey of New State Insurance Laws is available to the public as a featured link at NAMIC Online at http://www.namic.org/reghelpcenter/NewLaws02.asp.

Mr. Schmelzer said the report has shown "consistent Web traffic popularity over the past three years. He said it is "comprehensive and features a complete summary analysis of the major new law trends and separate state and issue specific listings with descriptions and hot links to the complete text of each new measure."

NAMIC is a national trade association that claims more than 1,200 member companies that underwrite 40 percent ($123.3 billion) of the p-c insurance premium in the United States.

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State Houses '02 Insurance Focus Was Auto, Comp

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