A report expected from the Federal Insurance Office later this month, addressing how to modernize and improve insurance regulation, could significantly affect the insurance industry, according to an industry regulatory expert.
The report from the new U.S. Treasury Department unit, ordered by the Dodd-Frank Act, is expected to guide public policy decision-making in the insurance industry at the federal level and perhaps even at the state level.
Michael Nelson, a lawyer with the New York law firm of Nelson Levine de Luca & Horst who represents insurers and reinsurers, said the new office “provides the federal government with a centralized structure to support its macro-level participation in the insurance industry.” That role could expand, he said.
More than 150 letters of recommendation regarding how the agency should proceed were submitted by the insurance industry.
Nelson notes that the Dodd-Frank Act explicitly states that the FIO does not have regulatory authority, leaving it short of the call by some in Congress to federalize all insurance. Inst