Koken Wants A Full Term As NAIC President

By Jim Connolly

NU Online News Service, Sept. 14, 11:25 a.m. EDT, Anchorage, Alaska?Diane Koken, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners new interim president, said she would like to serve a full term next year, as well.[@@]

She was elected this week to serve a three-month term replacing former South Carolina Insurance Director Ernst Csiszar, who abruptly resigned as president to take a job as head of the industry lobby group Property Casualty Insurers Association of America.

Ms Koken, the Pennsylvania insurance commissioner, said she is ready to commit to a 15-month period because she believes that level of continuity is needed to advance ongoing NAIC efforts to streamline and preserve state insurance regulation.

Discussing challenges and opportunities that she expects to experience during her tenure as president, she said in the coming year she expects to work with Congress on the State Modernization and Regulatory Transparency Act (SMART), the federal road map for modernizing insurance industry regulation.

She also mentioned an effort to get the newly adopted Market Conduct Surveillance Model Act approved by state legislatures and continuing work with the International Association of Insurance Supervisors on accounting standards.

The best case for state regulation, Ms. Koken said, is the kind of access it provides local consumers when there are problems such as a tornado which hit Pennsylvania. Many leaders showed up right after the tornado, but a month later it was the insurance department that continued to help consumers with questions that they had, Ms. Koken said during an address to commissioners.

When the NAIC works with Congress in the coming year, Ms. Koken said that the recent interruption in leadership will not affect Congress' perception of state insurance regulation. There are commissioners at the NAIC who understand the issues that have been under discussion, she said.

Special Reports /

Koken Wants A Full Term As NAIC President

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