PIA Challenges FIO Assertion That Insurance Should Be Regulated Like Banks

PIA takes issue in a press release with an assertion made by Michael McRaith, the director of the Federal Insurance Office (FIO), in a recent speech.

In remarks to the Networks Financial Institute’s Insurance Public Policy Summit on March 12, reported by Best’s News Service, McRaith said this: “We need to get past the notion that the insurance sector in the United States should be treated separately than any other sector because of this historic debate going back to 1904.”

“Rather than needing to ‘get past’ opposition to treating the insurance sector separately, advocates of greater federal involvement need to get over the idea that insurance can be regulated the same way the banking and securities sectors are by the federal government,” said PIA National Executive Vice President & CEO Mike Becker.

PIA National Senior Vice President Patricia A. Borowski added, “When Mr. McRaith says the insurance sector should be treated the same as the banking and securities sectors, he is dead wrong, and in conflict with current federal laws, among them the McCarran-Ferguson Act and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA). The fact that insurance is regulated by our state-based regulatory system is why our sector – and the policyholders it serves – emerged almost completely unscathed from the financial crisis of 2007-2009, in marked contrast to the federally-regulated sectors.”

Read PIA’s full press release here.