Tuesday, March 5, 2024
I’ve been thinking about regulators. Since 1871, a group of the chief insurance regulators from each state and the District of Columbia have gathered to coordinate, monitor, and protect their oversight of the glorious patchwork quilt that is our state-based insurance system. They’re called the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), and they want to better understand how what you do helps keep their citizens protected. Next week, we’ve been invited to help with that mission.
If you’ve learned over the years to skirt the dreaded cocktail party question, “What do you do?” (for fear of the glazed-over look in someone’s eyes when you answer) …just imagine being an insurance regulator in that scenario. I would imagine odds are 50 and pick ’em that their response is met with a yawn or a yell because the partygoer had a recent frustrating encounter with a claims department on their auto policy, long-term care policy, or homeowner’s policy. Especially in these times of weird weather and disasters.
These professionals are required to handle all those P&C products, plus every other kind of insurance you can imagine. Title insurance falls in their portfolio of responsibilities, too. Now, as an industry, we know all too well how challenging it can be to learn the intricacies of what we do. We know we usually must hire someone green and train them over years and years for them to have the expertise necessary to protect the transactions that keep our cities, towns and rural communities’ housing markets healthy. We spend entire decades of full-time careers learning to get it right. Yet the regulators become responsible for all of it, day one.
It is from that backdrop that we were thrilled to receive an invitation to speak at the NAIC’s Spring 2024 National Meeting next week in Phoenix. They’ve asked us for updates on what you and your industry are experiencing in this unpredictable market. They want to know about the burdens you’re facing, the challenges you’re overcoming and the unique demands that place acute pressures as you keep integrity embedded in your products, services, and processes.
On your behalf, we’ll bring them the results of our State of the Industry special report and shed light on what those results actually mean where the rubber meets the road: in your shops. As you shepherd good business through to successful closings, transaction by transaction, we’ll also highlight the work you do to help fight fraud, keep consumer data private, and keep constituents’ home purchases affordably protected. We’ll talk about pricing pressures, market realities and emerging market risks.
We will extend an invitation for them to join us and join you at this year’s NS3 in May, where all industry stakeholders come together to highlight the right solutions to protect consumers, no matter how this market unfolds.
If there’s something important to you that you’d like the NAIC to know, drop a note to my email mschuster@octoberresearch.com. We can’t wait to tell them the story of what you do!
Until next time,
Mary Schuster
Chief Knowledge Officer
October Research, LLC