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June 03, 2003 at 08:00 PM
NU Online News Service, June 3, 2003, 5:44 p.m. EDT — New York
U.S. insurance regulators should consider giving insurers a bigger role in preventing insurance company failures, according to New York Insurance Superintendent Greg Serio.
“Some regulators in the United States are absolutely fearful of failures,” Serio said here today at a conference organized by Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services, New York.
Serio agreed that regulators ought to try to prevent defaults, but he questioned whether regulators ought to try to prevent defaults at any cost.
Regulators could rely more on the kind of self-policing efforts developed by the Insurance Marketplace Standards Association, Washington, Serio said.
The current insurance company guaranty system is “elegant” because it makes insurers responsible for covering the cost of other insurers’ failures, Serio added.
The system could create more peer efforts to make sure that companies remain financially strong, Serio said.
Serio also suggested that technology could help insurance departments devote more staff time to monitoring insurer solvency.
