Missouri Insurance Director Doug Ommen said proposed market conduct regulations will codify the success of market conduct reforms during Gov. Matt Blunt’s administration. The reforms have resulted in increased consumer recoveries and increased settlements with insurance companies.
During Gov. Blunt’s administration, consumer recoveries equaled $27.8 million and company settlements totaled 194 settlements compared to $7.2 million in recoveries and 135 settlements during the previous administration.
The Market Conduct Section is responsible for monitoring insurance companies to protect Missouri policyholders. The section performs examinations to review an insurer’s operations, including marketing, underwriting, claims and complaint handling, policies and rates.
Published in the Missouri Register, the proposed rules provide uniform standards designed to avoid arbitrary issuance of exam warrants, prevent a narrowly focused exam from becoming a comprehensive exam without authorization from the director and allow Missouri to work more collaboratively with other states to avoid duplicate examinations.
Another major reform includes the addition of two market analysts to the Market Conduct Section. The section has been conducting market analysis for many years, but the department has never committed designated staff for the sole purpose of using existing data to review the market in refining the selection of insurance companies that may require an exam. Two market analysts have been hired — one for the life and health unit of the section and one for the property and casualty unit.
The Market Conduct Section is also employing pre-examination conferences to help make examiners more aware of the purpose and justification for each exam and boosting its training efforts for examiners to encourage open channels of communication between the exam team and the company being examined. Examiners will also be more involved in the closing and settlement of their exams, so they can better understand the outcomes of their findings.
The proposed rules include: 20 CSR 100-7.002, 7.005, 8.002, 8.005, 8.008, 8.012, 8.014, 8.015, 8.016, 8.017 and 8.018.
The department will conduct a public hearing on the rules at 9 a.m. on June 12, 2008, at the Harry S Truman State Office Building, Room 530 in Jefferson City.
Source: Missouri Department of Insurance, Financial Institutions & Professional Registration
Topics Missouri
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