More Insurers Favor Fed Regulation, Survey Finds

Using keypads at their seats the audience registered a response showing that 19 percent favored federal regulation. The question when asked last year saw only 14 percent voting for federal regulation.

The overwhelming majority, 54 percent, voted for state regulation?a decrease from last year's 62 percent.

Twenty-seven percent voted for a combination of state and federal?up from 24 percent last year.

About 580 persons are in attendance at the conference, only 134, however, registered responses on their keypads.

An earlier poll revealed that among those attending 31 percent have jobs in the executive management category, 22 percent are underwriters and 18 percent are actuaries, the rest are in other categories.

Eighty-three percent of the participants are from companies with premiums above $100 million.

Asked which issues are the most critical facing the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, 52 percent said terrorism exclusions and funding. In second place was the issue of regulatory modernization, which 25 percent voted for.

Eleven percent put mold exposure at the top of the list, 7 percent voted for medical malpractice problems and 5 percent for credit scoring.

The group was addressed by Mike Pickens, vice president of the NAIC and Arkansas Insurance Commissioner.

Mr. Pickens told the group that the NAIC is working hard to secure a federal backstop for catastrophic claims from terror attacks, but the issue is stalled over demands for restrictions on lawsuits.

"The problem in a nutshell is in the Senate with tort reform," he said.

Beyond the terrorism issue, Mr. Pickens said, "the most important issue the NAIC is dealing with right now" is an effort to streamline the approval process for the "speed to market" of insurance products.

He said that 41 states have approved the NAIC Producer Licensing Model act to comply with the Congressional mandate in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. NAIC is in the process of certifying that 29 of the states through their legislation have satisfied GLB reciprocity provisions.

The "bad news" he said is that some of the larger states, Pennsylvania and Maryland among them, have not approved producer licensing legislation.

"We are working with these states and NCOIL (Albany, N.Y.-based National Conference of Insurance Legislators) to identify why they are having problems," he said.