Insurance Regulation: Current Issues and Problems

Abstract

State regulation of the insurance business is one of this country's oldest regulatory systems. While its current issues are constantly changing, a few themes recur through the system's history—an emphasis on avoiding insolvencies, the reactions of many states to economic and regulatory im perialism from the east, an ambivalence toward competition and market innovation, and the economic and political impact of the independent insurance agent. Today the major issues in insurance regulation concern the insurance market (in cluding questions of the availability, quality, and price of coverage), the relationship of the insurance business to the rest of the economy (including questions of diversification and holding companies), and intergovernmental relations (national/ state and interstate). For reasons discernible today, it is likely that in the future the regulators will concern themselves more with the underlying causes of problems, will go more to fundamentals, and will look more to the interests of the public outside the traditionally closed relationship between regulator and regulated.