Colorado to Get New Insurance Commissioner

By Allison Bell

December 27, 2017 at 06:53 AM

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Marguerite Salazar is giving up the Colorado insurance commissioner title.

Salazar, who has been serving both as commissioner and as executive director of the state's Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) since July, will focus on running DORA, according to officials at the Colorado Division of Insurance.

(Related: Meet the 16 Women Who Run State Insurance Departments)

Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, appointed Salazar to the commissioner post in 2013.

Hickenlooper has named Michael Conway to serve as the interim insurance commissioner.

Conway has been the insurance division's deputy commissioner for consumer and compliance services since March 2016.

Before that, he was an assistant attorney general in the insurance unit at the state attorney general's office.

He has been involved in the liquidation of Colorado's nonprofit, member-owned Affordable Care Act CO-OP carrier, including efforts to get the federal government to make the payments promised by managers of the Affordable Care Act risk corridors program.

Conway has also been involved in efforts to have issuers of life insurance and annuity contribute to state guaranty association assessment funds when issuers of long-term care insurance (LTCI) fail. Because many states classify LTCI as a health insurance line, guaranty association have often relied solely on assessments on health insurers to cover the cost of protecting insolvent LTCI issuers' policyholders.

—Read Regulator: Market may need to reinvent LTCI on ThinkAdvisor.

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