Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
October 10, 2005 at 08:00 PM
The prospects for Congress ultimately to provide an optional federal charter for life insurance companies are brightening, the head of the industry’s top trade group says.
In comments at the American Council of Life Insurers’ annual conference in Washington, D.C., today, Frank Keating, ACLI president and chief executive officer, said the issue with the optional federal charter is not “whether there will be an OFC for life, but when.”
Elaborating on Keating’s remarks later, Kim Olson Dorgan, the ACLI’s top lobbyist, said members of Congress believe it is difficult to impose standards on the financial services industry that include the insurance industry because that business is mostly state regulated.
That means that under the current system, Congress has no way of enforcing any standards it seeks to impose on insurance companies, Dorgan said, including such issues as data security.
In an issue of growing concern to the insurance industry, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., introduced H.R. 3639, a bill that would bar an insurer from denying life insurance or establishing higher rates based on “the intent of such person to engage in future lawful foreign travel.”
Schultz says the law was intended to block insurers from denying or restricting life insurance policies to individuals traveling to Israel.
In comments during a panel discussion Sunday at the ACLI meeting, Jim Poolman, North Dakota insurance commissioner, voiced concern that such legislation is gaining support in Congress. Poolman said the NAIC had established a group to look into the issue.
