Greg Zerzan, the U.S. Treasury Department's acting assistant secretary for Financial Institutions, spoke from a prepared text and declined to elaborate. Indeed, he would not offer a substantive response when the Washington, D.C. insurance regulator, Larry Mirel, told him that TRIA was “not an unqualified success” because of affordability and availability concerns in urban areas, such as Washington and New York.

In addition, he did not respond directly when asked by an official at the American Council of Life Insurers to “please consider the group life industry” when evaluating whether TRIA should be extended, and what shape it would take.

All Mr. Zerzan said is that Treasury has just sent out the last of its survey forms to the insurance industry as it prepares its report on TRIA's viability, mandated to be presented to Congress by June 30. He added only that the administration wants to complete the report “as soon as possible.”

The industry had been hopeful that Mr. Zerzan would give some inkling as to administration support for extension of TRIA, and what shape a White House-sponsored bill would take. His office is responsible for drafting the report that industry officials believe will play a key role in their efforts to get TRIA extended, and to win a commitment for a long-term “public/private partnership” on terrorism coverage as well as specific coverage for nuclear, chemical, biological and radiation attacks.

Mr. Zerzan acknowledged that such coverage is not specifically mentioned in the current TRIA bill.

Mr. Zerzan spoke at a conference on financial institution regulatory reform organized by Baker & Daniels-Sagamore, a law and consulting firm.

The meeting took center stage because a Senate Banking Committee hearing regarding the fate of TRIA, scheduled to take place at the same time, was postponed when one of the ranking Democratic members was unable to attend. The meeting is expected to be held later this month.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, March 4, 2005. Copyright 2005 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.