Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
January 28, 2009 at 07:00 PM
Two Republicans on the Troubled Asset Relief Program Oversight Panel are recommending that Congress give insurers a choice between state and federal regulation.
Two Republicans on the Troubled Asset Relief Program Oversight Panel are recommending that Congress give insurers a choice between state and federal regulation.
Congress created the oversight panel when it developed TARP.
Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, and former Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., make the optional federal charter, or OFC, recommendation in a minority report.
Frank Keating, president of the American Council of Life Insurers, Washington, which supports the OFC concept, is praising Sununu and Hensarling’s recommendations.
Keating says he is disappointed that the panel majority did not include life insurance in its reform recommendations.
“Life insurance is a $5 trillion industry that operates globally, interacts closely with banks and securities firms, and affects the lives of almost all the American people,” Keating says.
Without a national insurance regulatory option, there will be a gaping hole in federal financial oversight, Keating says.
“It will be impossible to establish comprehensive oversight of systemic financial risk if the life insurance industry is not part of it,” Keating says.
The authors of the main report made 8 recommendations. One was that the government should identify and regulate financial institutions that pose systemic risk — including critical nonbank institutions — by designating the Federal Reserve Board or another agency to handle that task.
