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The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, Kansas City, Mo., has waived a $790,000 second installment in a 2004 industry fee assessment for the organizations Securities Valuation Office.
The installment was part of a $1.58 million 2004 assessment put in place to ensure that filing changes at the SVO, based in New York, are revenue neutral. In 2004, regulators agreed to make certain Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization-equivalent securities exempt from SVO filing.
But 4,097 exempt securities filed by companies in 2004 resulted in less of a shortfall and consequently less need for an assessment to maintain revenue neutrality, according to Catherine Weatherford, NAIC executive vice president and CEO.
Weatherford says the NAIC will try to educate companies to understand that those filings, NAIC-1 and NAIC-2 securities, do not have to be filed. Some companies may have chosen voluntarily to file in 2004 as they transition into the new system, she says, but many already have stopped filing those exempt securities. Indeed, the NAIC says that the number of those filings have declined to 4,097 filings from 24,790 securities in 2003.