Boston - At the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) meeting held here this weekend, the NAIC Property and Casualty Reinsurance Study group approved enhanced disclosure requirements for insurers that utilize reinsurance with limited risk transfer features, also known as finite reinsurance. The use of finite reinsurance has received considerable attention over the past several months, because of its misuse by some high-profile insurers. State insurance regulators, working in a coordinated fashion through the NAIC, have been evaluating existing relevant statutory financial reporting since last year. NAIC Property and Casualty Reinsurance Study Group approved enhanced disclosure requirements for insurers that utilize reinsurance with limited risk transfer features, also known as finite reinsurance. The use of finite reinsurance has received considerable attention over the past several months, because of its misuse by some high-profile insurers. State insurance regulators, working in a coordinated fashion through the NAIC, have been evaluating existing relevant statutory financial reporting since last year. The latest proposed disclosures would require an insurer to report to state insurance regulators any finite reinsurance agreement that has the effect of altering policyholders' surplus by more than three percent, or representing more than three percent of ceded premium or losses. Additional reporting requirements regarding contract terms and management's intention in entering the contract have been included to improve transparency. Study Group members also approved a standard attestation form to be signed by the insurer's CEO and CFO attesting that there are no side agreements and that risk transfer has occurred.

Washington D.C. - The National Association of Insurance Commissioners' (NAIC) plan to apply Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) corporate disclosure and accounting rules to non-public carriers will take center stage at the National Conference of Insurance Legislators' (NCOIL) Financial Services & Investment Products Committee meeting, which will convene on July 7 from 1:45 to 3:00 p.m., during the NCOIL Summer Meeting in Newport, Rhode Island.

A growing number of insurers are harnessing technology to improve services to customers victimized by identity theft.Some have established outreach programs that give policyholders access to third-party identity theft restoration services. One of them, Columbus, Ohio-based Nationwide Insurance Co., is providing other capabilities as well.

Carriers have been addressing Internet security ever since they realized the public network exposed them to denial of service attacks and theft of policyholder information. Firewalls, intrusion detection, encryption, virus scanning, access management-all these tools are staples in carriers' IT operations.But what about insurance agencies? Carriers exchange customer data with agencies via the Internet daily, and agents regularly access policyholder data within carrier systems.

What are the most important IT considerations for complying with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002? By July 15, all U.S. companies under $75 million in annual revenue must demonstrate they know the answer to that question, because that's the deadline for complying with Section 404.However, due to the lack of specific directives and knowledge, many companies are struggling with how to reach compliance by that date-let alone wondering how they will afford continued compliance year after year.

New York - Helping members better analyze and report their returns on standards investments, ACORD released a return on investment (ROI) analysis toolset at the 2005 ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum, held in Orlando on May 22-24.

Andover, Mass. - State National Companies, Fort Worth, Texas, has chosen CGI Group Inc., an independent information technology and business process services company, to provide full regulatory and statistical reporting services for their property and casualty book of business. Privately held, State National Companies includes three affiliates: State National Insurance Company, National Specialty Insurance Company and Texas-based State and County Mutual Fire Insurance Company.

Kansas City, Mo. - The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) met last week to discuss steps to amend disclosure requirements for insurers that utilize reinsurance with limited risk transfer features, also known as finite reinsurance.

Cleveland - The Compliance Consortium, an international membership organization formed in June 2004 to promote effective governance, risk and compliance management (GRC), has published its operational approach for managing GRC requirements within the enterprise. Applicable to both public and private companies, the framework is designed to assist senior management and boards of directors in setting objectives for managing a wide range of compliance-related activities and instituting the programs needed to attain those objectives. This initial version is a "public draft" and is intended to invite constructive criticism and ultimately to build a broad consensus within the hundreds of companies that have registered as part of The Compliance Consortium community over the past year. Leveraging the guidelines set forth by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the Consortium has defined seven operational concerns to serve as a framework for organizing and managing GRC operations. These range from clearly assigning responsibilities at all levels of the organization to establishing incentives and discipline to promote compliance The Consortium has developed a list of 12 questions that board members and senior management should ask to help ensure organizations are on track with their GRC objectives."Unquestionably, the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has increased the focus for public companies on the areas of corporate governance, risk management and compliance," says Ted Frank, chairman of the Compliance Consortium advisory committee and president of Axentis. "It's important to remember that, for many companies, Sarbanes-Oxley is just one of hundreds of mandates from the SEC, FDA and other regulatory bodies that they must manage. Our goal with the creation of this framework is to help all organizations define, execute and ultimately profit from low risk and efficient governance, risk and compliance management, regardless of the specific regulation or statute."

Kansas City, Mo. - The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) is taking steps to amend disclosure requirements for insurers that use reinsurance with limited risk transfer features, also known as finite reinsurance. The use of so-called finite reinsurance has received considerable attention over the past several months, because of its misuse by some high-profile insurers. State insurance regulators, working in a coordinated fashion through the NAIC, have been evaluating existing relevant statutory financial reporting since last fall. The latest proposed disclosures would require an insurer to report to state insurance regulators any agreement that has the effect of altering policyholders' surplus by more than 3%, or representing more than 3% of premium or losses. The new disclosure is also designed to identify any reinsurance contract that has been accounted for differently under statutory accounting principles compared to general financial statement purposes. Additional reporting requirements regarding contract terms and management's intention in entering the contract have been included to improve transparency. The provisions include that there are no separate agreements between the insurer and the reinsurer that could serve to modify the actual or potential losses under the contract, and that the insurer complies with all requirements of NAIC's statement of statutory accounting principle (SSAP) No. 62, "Property and Casualty Reinsurance."Source: NAIC

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) May 2 launched pilot project with five states to store electronic fingerprints of licensed insurance producers.

Newark, Calif.--As Florida's annual hurricane deductible law goes into effect on May 1 for the state's residential policyholders, Risk Management Solutions (RMS), the world's leading provider of products and services for the management of catastrophe risk, released the results of an analysis exploring the insurance industry impact of using the new deductible instead of a single event hurricane deductible.

Global 360 (formerly eiStream), a Dallas-based provider of business process management (BPM) and analysis solutions, announced that UICI has chosen to leverage its existing Global 360 Enterprise BPM solution to meet Sarbanes Oxley and HIPAA compliance. UICI-Oklahoma City, a division of MEGA Life & Health Insurance Co., North Richland Hills, Texas, provides health, life and related insurance products targeted at the small business and self-employed markets.

COLUMBUS, Ohio--Nationwide Insurance and Washington D.C.-based ID Theft Assist are joining forces to offer ground-breaking identity theft protection and recovery service that surpasses IDtheft policies currently on the market.

PHILADELPHIA--Regardless of whether or not the U.S. Federal Government authorizes an extension to TRIA (Terrorism Risk Insurance Act) beyond the end of this year, terrorism remains a very real threat and should not be ignored.

STAMFORD, Conn.--The Tillinghast business of Towers Perrin recently unveiled two new software applications to help insurers prepare for impending capital standards for variable annuity products.

The relationship between regulatory requirements and data standards is the subject of a new report from ACORD, N.Y.-based insurance industry data standards association. "ACORD Strategic Analysis: The Impact of Standards on the U.S. Regulatory Landscape," available through ACORD's Web site, www.acord.org

Internet security is a major concern for independent agents, with 80% saying they're most worried about viruses and worms, and 42% saying it's their second-biggest worry. That's according to a new survey released by IVANS Inc., Old Greenwich, Conn.

Don't throw away the sleeping pills just yet. If you're a senior executive or manager with financial accountability, chances are, over the past year, you've had trouble sleeping because you've been worried about complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley law--especially the part that holds you personally responsible for attesting to the adequacy of your company's internal controls over financial reporting.Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that SOX--passed in 2002--requires executive officers of public companies to annually attest to the effectiveness of internal controls over their financial reports. If you fail to establish and maintain appropriate controls, you can be fined and even sent to jail.

Maybe it's because so many companies have focused most of their attention on complying with Sarbanes-Oxley this past year, but a significant portion of health insurers and health care providers will not meet the security requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) by the April 20 deadline.Only 30% of payers and 18% of providers said they were already compliant with the HIPAA security regulations in a survey released in February by Phoenix Health Systems, a Montgomery Village, Md.-based consulting firm to hospitals.