Legislation to renew the federal terrorism reinsurance program advanced another step today when it was passed by the Senate Banking Committee.
The Senate legislation (S.2877) is identical to the bill (H.R. 4634) that passed the House earlier this week by a vote of 385-22.
The measures would reauthorize the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA), which is currently set to expire on Dec. 31, 2020, for another seven years.
The Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America (the Big “I”) backs the renewal of TRIA, which since its initial enactment, the federal program has undergone three additional reauthorizations in 2005, 2007 and 2015. “There is still a very real need for the program, as the threat of terrorism is still ever-present, and the unique nature of this risk has not changed,” said Wyatt Stewart, Big “I” senior director, federal government affairs.
Nat Wienecke, senior vice president for federal government relations, American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA), said the broad bipartisan support in the House and the Senate Banking Committee sends a “clear message of the critical role TRIA plays in stabilizing the economy” and urged Senate Majority Leader McConnell to act on this legislation before the end of the year.
Jimi Grande, senior vice president of Government Affairs, National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, said that in addition to providing a “stabilizing effect” in the short-term following a terrorist attack, TRIA has helped “create a robust private market for terrorism insurance to form where it would not have otherwise.”
Grande, too, stressed, the bipartisan support as well as the unanimous passage by the Senate Banking Committee that he said demonstrates that “there is little daylight between the two chambers or between the two sides of the aisle. There is no reason Congress shouldn’t be able to get a bill to the president’s desk by the end of the year,” the NAMIC representative said.
Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Legislation Reinsurance Politics
Was this article valuable?
Here are more articles you may enjoy.
Uncertainty Keeps Prices Up; No Prior-Year Loss Development: Travelers 
USAA to Lay Off 220 Employees 
Marsh McLennan Agency to Buy Fisher Brown Bottrell for About $316M 
Why New York’s Attorney General Objects to Trump’s Bond Insurer 
