Federal Advisory Committee on Insurance to Hold Next Meeting August 6, 2012 in Washington D.C.
Jun 5, 2012
The following article was published in LifeHealthPro on June 4, 2012:
FACI Sets Next Washington Meeting for Aug 6
By Elizabeth Festa
The Federal Advisory Committee on Insurance (FACI) will be hosting its second in-person meeting on August 6, weeks later than the proposed June meeting date. They have also assigned members to two subcommittees to assess demographic changes, per Federal Insurance Office (FIO) Director Michael McRaith.
McRaith, along with FACI Chairman Brian Duperreault, president and CEO of the Marsh & McLennan Companies, assigned members to either the Affordability and Accessibility of Insurance Subcommittee or an International Regulatory Balance Subcommittee.
These two subcommittees were asked to assess the impact of two demographic changes McRaith has earlier discussed: (1) the aging of the population in developed countries and the increased longevity of those who are aging –i.e. the silver tsunami, and (2) the development of the middle class in emerging economies and the impact that economic progress in those countries will have on the international insurance marketplace.
According to sources, not a lot of work, if any, has been done so far by the group.
Affordability and Accessibility of Insurance members are:
Birny Birnbaum, a consumer advocate, consulting economist and director of the Center for Economic Justice; Virginia Insurance Commissioner Jacqueline K. Cunningham; Loretta Fuller, CEO of Insurance Solutions Associates Inc.; Nevada Insurance Commissioner Scott Kipper; Christopher Mansfield, senior vice president and general counsel of Liberty Mutual Group; and Washington, D.C., Insurance, Securities and Banking Commissioner William P. White.
International Regulatory Balance members are:
Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Michael Consedine, New York Life Insurance Co. CFO Michael E. Sproule, John Degnan, senior advisor to the CEO of the Chubb Corp.; New York Department of Financial Services Superintendent Benjamin Lawsky; Scott E. Harrington, Ph. D, of the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania and a scholar for health policy at the American Enterprise Institute; Connecticut Insurance Commissioner Tom Leonardi, Monica Lindeen, Montana Commissioner of Securities and Insurance and State Auditor; and Sean McGovern, a director and general counsel of Lloyd’s North America, who is the international representative on the panel.
Duperreault will be an ex-officio member of each. He has set July 9 from 2 to 5 pm for the organizational meeting for both Subcommittees.
Duperreault did not respond to requests for comment on FACI.
At the inaugural meeting of the FACI (pronounced “fah-key”), on March 30 in Washington, McRaith steered the group’s first meeting – a nearly three and a-half-hour-long rolling conversation between a collection of disparate forces from across the insurance industry – toward one of the overarching trends he believes needs attention: the demographics of Western society, with its growing middle class and aging/longevity issues.
While McRaith spotlighted the importance of the internationalization of insurance, and the priority of the U.S. to receive fair play globally, he cautioned participants to not focus on specific countries or to get enmeshed in overly specific issues in their FACI advisory roles. Instead, McRaith suggested, they should look at supervision on a broad scale, and address insurance supervision systemically.
McRaith is seeking ever-more knowledge and coordination at all levels. He recently hosted a meeting across federal agencies on their supervisory role in insurance.
The new, government-only group, a self-styled new assembly known as the “Federal Government Insurance Forum,” first met March 22 and revealed the massive internationalization of the insurance markets, according to McRaith, who noted the “numbers are staggering.”
The Forum includes representatives from over 20 U.S. agencies – as far-flung across the supervisory spectrum as the Federal Aviation Administration, the United States Trade Representative’s office and the Overseas Private Investment Corp.