Federal Charter Hearings To Start In June

He hopes to demonstrate that the issue has wide support among insurance companies, both life and property-casualty, agents and others within the financial services community, such as banks.

ACLI will be working with other members of the Financial Services Coordinating Council, Washington, to make the case for optional federal chartering.

In addition to ACLI, FSCC members include the American Insurance Association, the American Bankers Association and the Securities Industry Association, all of Washington.

Another group, the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America, Alexandria, Va., is taking a different approach.

"While ACLI and others that support OFC will certainly testify, IIABA will also testify in favor of a more pragmatic solution," says Maria Berthoud, IIABA's senior vice president of federal government affairs.

IIABA supports using federal government tools to help modernize state insurance regulation, but it opposes optional federal chartering. The group believes that the goal of reforming state insurance regulation can be accomplished without creating a new bureaucracy in Washington, Berthoud said.