The Oval Office isn't the only place with a new occupant. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) is under the command of a new president, Roger Sevigny, who is also the New Hampshire insurance commissioner.
Plans call for a continuation of the initiatives already begun by NAIC, says Sevigny, including plans to transition NAIC headquarters from Kansas City to Washington, D.C. Support functions will remain in Kansas City, but the CEO will also move to Washington, says Sevigny. Currently NAIC is concerned with hiring a new CEO, on which he says they're "making very good progress."
Sevigny says that while NAIC believes that state regulation of insurance is of paramount importance, and provides the best consumer protection available, "we also as a membership recognize that there needs to be much closer interaction, not only with Congress, but with other functional regulators in other financial sectors" such as the SEC and the Fed, among others.
"Certainly our support for Congressman Kanjorski's Office of Insurance Information last fall was evidence that we believe Congress needed access to better, more immediate information regarding the world of insurance," Sevigny adds.
NAIC is also concerned with what a federal systemic risk regulator might look like. "We've all seen and heard that in all likelihood we're going to see an effort made to develop a federal systemic risk regulator," Sevigny explains, and says that NAIC wants to make sure that if such a regulator is developed, state regulators are part of the development process.
