New York life insurance and annuity beneficiaries can breath easier! They are safe again! Two years after the statutory life guaranty fund was exhausted by the Executive Life Insurance Company of New York failure, the State’s legislature has passed and the Governor has signed into law legislation restoring the viability of the fund. The new […]
Regulators are people too! I spend a lot of focus in this column on problems with excessive, pointless, redundant and counter-productive insurance laws and regulations. In the process, however, many of those individuals responsible for interpreting and enforcing the rules are often unintentionally caught in the crossfire. So I want to take a moment to […]
Shame on AIG! It has now joined the growing list of insurance companies in NY that have agreed to pay substantial fines for their sins. These are not the fines of our predecessor administrations, where the largest fines were in the hundreds of thousands. No, now we are talking about fines in the tens of […]
The year 1984 has significance on so many fronts but none greater than its import regarding access to information. Contrast 1984 as George Orwell’s target year in his futuristic classic about subverting control over all communications through “Big Brother,” with 1984 as the year the first Macintosh computer was introduced and the dawning of the […]
Welcome to my 50th Insight Column! I guess that makes it some kind of golden anniversary. But I look at it more as having been provided with a golden opportunity. For the past two and a half years my column has been addressing the natural tension between insurance regulators and regulatees, particularly where regulated entities […]
[INSIGHT ] By Peter H. Bickford Controlling Information It has been almost twenty years since Seinfeld’s mailman Newman uttered that threat and, even with the passage of time and the ensuing digital age, it is still a timeless reminder of the importance of availability and access to information. Even today with seemingly unfettered access to […]
[INSIGHT ] By Peter H. Bickford Who says the art of letter writing is dead? In this age of smart phones, instant messaging, initials in place of sentences, and the general demise of the printed word, it is quite refreshing to see at least one regulator that seems to relish the written word and […]
Last August I took a semi-serious look at the acronymic National and International insurance regulatory agencies, institutions and forces of nature (“Late Summer Delights: Fishing for Acronyms,” IA, August 19, 2013), with a somewhat jaundiced view of how these paragons of regulatory expertise may affect the future course of the insurance industry and its denizens. […]
Oh the anticipation! Ever hopeful for pleasant surprises and thoughtful gifts! Alas, once again it is not to be. Nothing but another collection of coal in our stockings! Guess we’re still bad boys and girls. The 2013 annual report of the NY superintendent of financial services to the governor and the legislature, required to be […]
There is an interesting dilemma that the NY regulators have been facing for literally decades now. It involves a well-defined and acknowledged violation of the insurance law and regulations that has defied any viable enforcement solution. The subject is the issuance of insurance certificates that improperly expand or provide coverages not intended or included in […]
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