Baker Introduces TRIA Bill That Includes Group Life %28Updated%29

A House Republican from Louisiana has come out with a new Terrorism Risk Insurance Act continuation proposal that would add group life to the TRIA program.[@@]

Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., chairman of the capital markets subcommittee at the House Financial Services Committee, has introduced H.R. 4314, a 2-year TRIA extension bill that would create the Terrorism Risk Insurance Revision Act of 2005.

The Bush administration has repeatedly emphasized that it would like to see Congress reduce the scope of the TRIA program. The administration has argued that group life insurers do not deserve to be added to TRIA because they seem to be doing well and have made too little use of commercial terrorism reinsurance.

The House Financial Services Committee posted a summary of H.R. 4314 that made no mention of group life insurance. But the full text of the bill shows that the bill would include protection for group life programs and workers’ compensation programs as well as for commercial property-casualty programs.

The bill would exclude protection for corporate-owned life insurance and bank-owned life insurance programs from the TRIA reinsurance program.

The bill also would:

- Increase the size of the losses needed to trigger use of the TRIA program to $100 million by 2007.

- Raise deductibles.