UPDATE: Nevada Insurance Commissioner Scott Kipper is the newest member of the FIO advisors group, replacing Teresa Miller.
Hark! The first meeting of the Federal Advisory Committee on Insurance (FACI) has been scheduled at the U.S.Treasury Department, even as industry participants, consumer groups, state regulators and perhaps Congress anxiously await the report to Congress from Treasury's Federal Office of Insurance (FIO.)
The open meeting will convene March 30th at 1 pm, in the Cash Room, at Treasury, about five months after the advisors were named.
Although the FIO report on how to modernize and improve insurance regulation is said to be close to being finished, it likely will not be released this week, or even next, according to sources. The much-anticipated report will be seen by many as a bellwether for the future developments of the complicated relationship between federal and state-based insurance regulation.
Whether the report is finally out by March 30th is an open question, but National Underwriter is awaiting confirmation that FIO Director Michael McRaith, has cancelled delivery of the keynote address at Indiana State University's 8th annual Networks Financial Institute's Insurance Reform Summit in Washington, D.C. on March 21, next week, because the report will not be ready by then.
However, the FACI members are people with outside insurance sector jobs who are designated to provide advice to FIO, which was established as part of the Dodd-Frank financial services reform law, on issues related to the responsibilities of the office.
McRaith stated when he announced their names Nov. 2, "These individuals have tremendous knowledge about the insurance industry and a wide cross-section of experience."
He said he was pleased "that they will be offering their valuable expertise as the [FIO] continues moving forward with its critical work."
