SAN FRANCISCO–Insurance regulators meeting here said they have experienced difficulties but will continue efforts to develop a market conduct annual statement database, despite industry concerns it poses a confidentiality threat.
The database move is overseen by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners' Market Regulation and Consumer Affairs Committee.
Regulators who took part in the NAIC discussion put no timetable on the project due to questions of resources and confidentiality that have yet to be resolved.
The annual statement database is just one of several the NAIC has proposed that have sparked industry concern that regulators will not be able to shield the information from a Freedom of Information Act subpoena because the NAIC has no official government status.
At the spring meeting earlier this year, Committee Chair and Washington Commissioner Mike Kreidler said he had ordered a cost benefit as well as legal analysis of the proposed database before any project was completed.
The committee recently completed a feasibility study, and regulators said it will disclose its finding in the coming days, once the leadership of the NAIC has been fully briefed.
The Market Conduct Annual Statement so-called pilot project now includes nearly half the states, and Mr. Kreidler said handling the data has become somewhat unwieldy.
David Snyder, assistant general counsel for the American Insurance Association, told the group, "The issue of confidentiality must be resolved before any more movement on the issue."
Consumer representative Birny Birnbaum with the Center for Economic Justice in Austin, Texas, on the other hand, took the committee to task for the slow movement on the database, noting it was one of the panel's top charges for 2007.
Mr. Birnbaum leveled similar charges to the panel in relation to the subgroup itself dealing with the annual statement issue, asserting that it has focused solely on the issue of certification of market analysis data while ignoring charges relating to development of a uniform analysis process for as well as inclusion of new market data items.
Market Analysis Priorities Working Group Chair and Wisconsin regulator Jo LeDuc said that certification was indeed a critical issue in ensuring that companies report such data in a consistent manner.
"States have been having a data integrity problem in reporting the data, and by getting an officer of the company to certify the data we believe we have moved it out of the realm of the IT people and put it to the business people," she said.
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