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Insurance Expert Finally Tapped for FSOC
The insurance industry may soon
have a voting member on the Financial
Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) after
Former Treasury Official and Kentucky
Insurance Commissioner S. Roy Woodall
was nominated by President Obama and
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for
the post.
If confirmed by the Senate, Woodall
will join two non-voting insurance members on the FSOC: National Association of
Insurance Commissioners’ representative
and Missouri Insurance Director John
Huff and Michael McRaith, director of the
newly created Federal Insurance Office.
Woodall’s nomination comes on the
heels of calls by the insurance industry
groups such as the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI) to fill
the vacant post, as the FSOC had already
begun work on the rule-making phase of
the Dodd-Frank Act.
“We are pleased that the Department
of Treasury has listened to the calls from
the insurance sector and congressional
leaders from both sides of the aisle to fill
this critically important position,” said David Sampson, president and CEO of PCI.
“Mr. Woodall brings extensive experience
in the insurance sector and an understanding of the state insurance regulatory
system.”
Pusey said Woodall’s experience is
vital as the FSOC crafts rules to determine
which firms are deemed systemically
important financial institutions (SIFIs) and
subject to greater oversight.
“Mr. Woodall also has an intimate
working knowledge of our industry and
will be a strong voice in helping inform
the other FSOC members on the distinc-
tions between the property/casualty
business model and other, bank-centric
financial services.” Pusey said. “This will
be especially critical as the FSOC delib-
erates on which non-bank financial firms
it will designate as systemically impor-
tant. AIA continues to believe the FSOC
should adopt a risk-related, activities-
based approach to the SIFI designation
process under Dodd-Frank for non-bank
financial companies, rather than revert-
ing to size as the primary determinant.”
Sampson agreed that the FSOC should
treat insurance differently than other
financial sectors, given the industry’s
unique business model and the strong
consumer protections already provided at
the state level. “Property/casualty insurers
are not highly leveraged or intercon-
nected and have a fundamentally different
business model than banks, a fact that
warrants different regulatory treatment,”
he said.
from: Joe McKendrick,
June 30, 2011
topic: Are Operating
Systems Still Relevant—
Or Something That
Gets in the Way?
Leigh Ann Pusey, president and CEO of
the American Insurance Association (AIA),
noted that Woodall has worked closely
with the industry in the past, helping to
design the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
“Mr. Woodall is a dedicated public
servant who has devoted his professional career to the field of insurance,”
Pusey said. “Through his work as a state
insurance commissioner, in the insurance trade association community, and
at the U.S. Department of Treasury, Mr.
Woodall has developed a deep understanding of the issues and has been exposed to some of the biggest challenges
facing the industry.”
Financial Results
Industry Stung by Q1 Losses
The U.S. property/casualty industry’s net income after taxes
plunged 29.3% to $9 billion in the first quarter of 2011, driven
primarily by an underwriting loss of $3.6 billion, attributable
to an unusually high level of catastrophe-related losses and to a
lesser extent, diminished reserve releases, notes a new report
by AM Best.
The agency reports that the industry’s statutory combined
ratio was 102.3 in the three months ended March 31, 2011,
up from 99.3 during the same prior year period, and the
industry’s investment performance was down. Still, balance
sheets remained generally strong, and the industry’s policyholders’ surplus increased to a record $561.2 billion at March
31, 2011.
All three major segments—personal lines, commercial lines
and U.S. reinsurance, reported a continued upward trend in
net premiums written. Further, notes the report, underwriting
results showed a modest profit in the personal lines segment,
but the commercial lines and U.S. reinsurance segments both
reported underwriting losses through the first quarter of the
year.
... We have entered an era—
thanks to Web services, service
oriented architecture and cloud
— where it doesn’t matter what
OS is running on your devices
or in your data center.
Furthermore, it doesn’t really
matter what your cloud or
service provider or hosting
service is running in theirs. Even
IBM’s venerable mainframe will
run Linux and Windows.
And it also no longer
matters what OS is running on
client devices. The big
sensation for end users (iPad
and other touchscreen devices,
as well as smartphones) is to
simply turn it on and give you
access to apps and the Internet.
Just as turning on a TV set gets
you to the shows you want to
watch. No fussing with OS
upgrades, updates, booting, and
security patches. When these
things occur, they’re behind the
scenes, almost invisible to end-users. Is this something we
want to see with enterprise
servers as well?
The original intent of OSes
such as Unix and Windows was
to provide about 75% of the
functionality and connectivity
needed. The rest was to be filled
in by third-party software or
enterprise developers, to
custom-tailor applications to
specific requirements.
But we’re seeing more a
blurring between the big
systems and smaller systems…
Join the conversation:
http://www.insurancenet-
working.com/blogs/
in e c nve sa :
ttp ww s ra c n t-
r log /
insurancenetworking.com
July/august 2011 insurance networking news ;
