Speakers: Jerome F. Weihs

Year: 2011

This session will explore the possible effect of recent legislative changes on the life insurance industry, which escaped most provisions of regulatory reform (seen mostly as "bank-centric"). Congress has passed and the President has signed landmark legislation on financial reform that imposes tighter regulations on financial firms, boosts consumer protection, forces banks to reduce risky trading and investment activities and sets up a governmental process for liquidating troubled financial firms. While federal regulators have the authority to wind down troubled large institutions, the role of state insurance regulators was largely left intact and they will continue to have the ability to "wall off" insurance companies from troubled holding companies.