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March 12, 2007 at 10:54 PM
A panel at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners has decided to spend more time working on travel underwriting rules.
Travel underwriting is the practice of using information about consumers’ past travel and future travel plans in decisions about insurance coverage.
Members of the NAIC’s Life Insurance and Annuities Committee voted 6-5 here at the group’s spring meeting to support enforcing proposed travel underwriting rules through routine company examinations, rather than by requiring insurers to file travel underwriting criteria with state insurance regulators.
Julie McPeak, the Kentucky insurance director and chair of the Life and Annuities Committee, broke a 5-5 tie by voting in favor of the change, which would affect proposed amendments to the Unfair Trade Practices Act model law.
The Life and Annuities Committee could send the proposed amendments to the NAIC’s executive committee, but McPeak said she wants her committee to deliberate more on the amendments because she does not feel uncomfortable about advancing them with a tiebreaker vote.
The issue of travel underwriting surfaced in 2005, when a life insurer refused to issue additional coverage to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., because she said she might visit Israel.
Officials at the NAIC, Kansas City, Mo., have been discussing proposed amendments to the UTPA model that would require insurers to get prior approval from state regulators for any travel underwriting criteria.
David Parsons, who spoke for Alabama, suggested changing the proposed amendments by eliminating the criteria filing requirement.
