S&P Global Market Intelligenceoffers our top picks of insurance news stories and more published throughout theweek.
Risk & Regulation
A greatershift to robo-advisersfor average savers may follow the new fiduciary rule, an audience member expressed atthe recently held Life Insurance Conference panel dedicated to the new standard'simplications for retirement planners and the wider investment advice industry.
Standard& Poor's Ratings Services does not expect to change its ratings on U.S. life insurers as a result of the new fiduciaryrules, but sees potential ratings implications in the next couple of years dependingon how life insurers adjust to the new regulation.
Louisiana Insurance Commissioner James Donelon aired conflict-of-interestconcerns over the insuranceregulatory organization's searchfor a new CEO, launching a bid to banformer regulators from NAIC jobs until two years after they leave office. But theofficial proposal failed to garner any support among members of the NAIC's GovernanceReview Task Force.
The NAIC Group Calculation WorkingGroup met during the NAIC Spring National Meeting, spurring many questions and furnishing few answers. Insuranceindustry representatives, as well as fellow regulators, queried the working group,with some seeking assurances that group capitalcalculation for U.S. insurance groups would not later become a model law but insteadserve as a tool for state regulators.
The NAICis seeking to fast-track a cybersecuritymodel law, but the insurance industry is pushing back on the timing and the contentof the proposal.
Legislationneeded to enable principle-based reserving,or PBR, methods in the life insurance industry had been enacted by 42 states representingmore than 75% of industry premiums by the end of March. But neither the NAIC northe life insurance industry is sounding the trumpet in triumph after ostensiblyreaching the minimum threshold to implement PBR at the beginning of 2017.
Potentialreforms for the AffordableCare Act's risk adjustment program was on the agenda during a recent private meetingof state insurance regulators. The NAIC's newCo-Op Solvency and Receivership Subgroup would focus on whether the states havethe authority to make changes to a program largely run by the federal government.
Life and health
TreasurySecretary Jacob Lew claimedthat the court's decision left one of the most interconnected financial companiesin the world subject to even less oversight than it had prior to the financial crisis.
P&C
As partof AIG's cost-cuttingprogram, employees ofthe company's U.K. operations were notified of a plan for job cuts that may include 125 positions in the country,Bloomberg News reported.
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