NAIC CEO Ben Nelson’s Message to Academy Annual Meeting: Your Input Is ‘More Critical Than Ever’
Speaking at the American Academy of Actuaries’ Annual Meeting and Public Policy Forum in Washington on Nov. 14, National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) CEO Ben Nelson thanked the Academy, its committed volunteers, and dedicated staff for their involvement and contributions to the NAIC for nearly 50 years and described the Academy’s role as “instrumental” to the NAIC’s work on state-based insurance regulation. He said the NAIC would continue to tap the Academy’s expertise in implementing Own Risk and Solvency Assessment, principle-based reserving for life insurance, and other major regulatory initiatives on both the domestic and international levels. In discussing many of the common initiatives worked on by the NAIC and the Academy, Nelson remarked on the “wealth of actuarial input given by the Academy to the NAIC.” Nelson, who is also a former U.S. senator, governor, and insurance commissioner from the state of Nebraska, strongly defended the U.S. insurance sector as a “source of stability” that should not be regulated “like it’s a short-term, high-risk enterprise.” On the international level, he said, “The fixation of international standard setters on capital as a buffer – if not the buffer – to mitigate risks suggests the actuarial profession’s voice is now more critical than ever. For years, we have worked side by side to build risk-based capital and a solvency framework that is tailored to our regulatory approach and the U.S. market. We now collectively face a threat to that work, should bank-like regulation bleed into the insurance space.” He identified the need to reauthorize the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) before year end as an immediate priority, as well as working longer-term on growing threats to cyber security. Read the entire remarks here.