AIA Bearish On ORSA

Efforts by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to reconcile U.S. solvency standards with international standards are beginning to encounter push back from insurers.

Specifically, NAIC’s proposed development of an Own Risk and Solvency Assessment (ORSA) is drawing criticism from the American Insurance Association (AIA), which is charging that it is unduly burdensome. NAIC is crafting the ORSA, an internal evaluation by an insurer of its risk profile, to comply with the Insurance Core Principles (ICP) of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) and also the European Union’s pending Solvency II directive.

The regulators argue that the ORSA is necessary to determine an insurer’s ability to remain solvent under various scenarios.

Phil Carson, AIA assistant general counsel, counters that the exam is superfluous. “Given that U.S. insurance regulators already employ a variety of tools for evaluating the financial condition of an insurer, AIA questions whether an ORSA tool is indeed necessary,” Carson said in a statement.

Carson noted that the NAIC is also considering a group-level ORSA to assess the risk between insurance holding companies and their insurance operations. He says the undertaking is a duplicative effort, given that the NAIC recently approved a revised model insurance holding company act that would require an Enterprise Risk Report.