NU Online News Service, Jan.29, 3:00 p.m.EST

Indiana's Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels ordered his state'sinsurance department not to participate in a National Associationof Insurance Commissioners climate risk survey, one officialsaid.

Another official with the Indiana State Insurance Departmentsaid later that the governor was only supporting the existingpolicy of that agency.

The state's action was revealed in a discussion that took placebefore an NAIC task force unit voted to approve a cover letter andformat for the survey, which will go to insurers writing $500million or more in premium. Later, another Indiana official saidthe decision was made by the department, but the governor supportedit.

At that same conference call session, Alabama said it also maynot require insurers based there to fill out the survey.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario,chairman of NAIC's Climate Change and Global Warming (EX) TaskForce, said NAIC has been in discussion with the Securities andExchange Commission, which voted Wednesday to require corporatefilings to include information on the business impact of climatechange and the results of regulations curbing greenhouse gasemissions.

Mr. Ario remarked that "the SEC basically followed our lead" andthere would be overlap in the information being sought by the twoorganizations.

The overall concept of the NAIC's survey was approved by themain body in March of last year. It would be sent out to thelargest insurer in a business group by the state where thatoperation is domiciled–if the state chose to do so.

Indiana Chief Deputy Insurance Commissioner John Kissling, whorevealed Indiana's decision during the conference call said later lthat his state's announcement "is a little bit of a curve for theNAIC. They expected all states to jump on board."

He said his department would not take part in the survey because"it's our governor's position." Gov. Daniels' office did notimmediately respond to a request for his rationale. Later thestate's Acting Insurance Commissioner and General Counsel DougWebber said the department had opposed it because the survey "makesno meaningful contribution in evaluating company solvency."

The term climate change risk, he said is vague and ill definedand does not spell out what exact perils are involved. "Thegovernor's fine with that position," he explained.

The governor, who was Office of Management and Budget directorunder George W. Bush, has been public with outspoken views ongovernment action related to climate change, writing of PresidentObama in The Wall Street Journal that he has an "imperialclimate change policy."

Mr. Kissling said Indiana has about 10 insurers with premium ata level that would make them an NAIC's survey recipient. Thedepartment, he said, would not object if an insurer wished to fillout the survey voluntarily.

He said they also would not object if a regulator in anotherstate wished to survey a subsidiary of an Indiana-domiciled group,"but our position is they can't ask that company to speak for therest of the group."

At the start of the task force discussion Mr. Ario said it wouldbe strictly limited to the cover letter and the survey format.

The regulators agreed to have the cover letter includeinformation making clear that the insurers' information providedwould eventually be made public and available on the NAIC Website.

Mr. Ario said the NAIC would work to avoid duplication of statesurvey requests to one insurer. He said the information would notbe made available electronically until all the companies' materialhad been aggregated. It will go up without comment, but will beformatted so the public can easily search electronically forspecific data.

Mr. Ario said the material asked for in the survey is notforward looking or proprietary, "it's about giving general broadanswers."

Originally the survey questions, in addition to seeking fullwritten responses, included a "yes" or "no" box at the top, butsome insurers said they would not be able to respond that way toall questions, so the task force voted to leave it out overobjections from the National Association of Mutual InsuranceCompanies.

The vote for the revised formats on the letter and questionnairehad six task force members voting for it and two abstaining.

An Alabama regulator said he was abstaining because "we're notsure we're going to require the survey."