On August 27, 2013, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) released an interim update on the progress the United States has made in implementing recommendations made during its 2010 Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP).

While the FSB does acknowledge that the United States has taken steps toward meeting recommendations through creation of the Federal Insurance Office (FIO), modernizing of solvency requirements, and increased coordination between U.S. state regulators and federal authorities, it concludes that “significant work is required to fully address the FSAP recommendations” in the area of insurance.

In a press release the FSB states that, “The architecture for insurance supervision in the U.S., characterized by the multiplicity of state regulators, the absence of federal regulatory powers to promote greater regulatory uniformity and the limited rights to pre-empt state law, constrains the ability of the U.S. to ensure regulatory uniformity in the insurance sector.”

Based on its perceived “drawbacks of the current regulatory set-up,” the FSB laid out several recommendations to enhance the U.S. insurance system: (1) further strengthening of the FIO; (2) further enhancement of insurance group supervision by establishing requirements for consolidated financial reporting for all insurance groups and by giving supervisors additional authority to fully assess the entire insurance group’s financial condition; and (3) implementation of FSAP recommendations concerning terms of state insurance commissioner appointments, rule-making powers of state insurance departments, and funding and staffing of insurance departments in order to strengthen specialist skills.

The FSB’s recommendations have been met with pushback from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). In a June 27, 2013 letter in response to an earlier draft of the FSB’s recommendations, the NAIC argued the report “focuses almost exclusively on the perceived cost of having a state-based system, but spends no time examining the benefits of this approach.” The letter goes on to argue that state commissioners are able to “act more quickly and in closer proximity to consumers,” which has led to an industry that is “competitive, profitable, solvent” while consumers “benefit from choice, security, and a local regulatory response that is second to none.”

Ben Nelson, Chief Executive Officer of the NAIC, went further in a September 17 interview with Bloomberg: “There is, I think, a philosophical difference about government here. We come from the Jeffersonian idea of the states.” He went on to say that “there is value in regulation that is closest to the people, because New York is different than Nebraska.”

The Financial Stability Board was established to coordinate the work of national financial authorities and international standard setting bodies at the international level. FSAP evaluations are conducted every five years and look at how a country’s financial sector compare to accepted regulatory international standards. For insurance, the study is based on the Insurance Core Principles (ICPs) developed by the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS). Recommendations from the FSB are advisory only and each country decides if and how to implement them.

This report was prepared by representatives from Deutche Bundesbank, Swiss National Bank, Japan Financial Services Agency, European Commission, European Systemic Risk Board Secretariat, Bank of Canada and the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India. The FSB secretariat also provided support and contributed to the preparation of the report.