OECD - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

  • oecd.org/    
  • Year-? - OEDC - Encouraging a Dynamic Life Insurance Industry: Economic Benefits and Policy Issues, by by Gerry Dickinson, Professor and Director, Centre for Insurance & Investment Studies, City University Business School, London - 10p
    • These long-term savings generated by life insurance companies can also be made available to government to allow to fund improvements in the infrastructure, since this infrastructure
      investment is important , especially in emerging economies, not only to underpin the growth of domestic private sector companies but also to encourage foreign companies to enter the local economy
  • oecd.org/finance/financial-education/G20EffectiveApproachesFCPAnnex.pdf
    • 26. The Code of Conduct for Insurers (―CoCI‖) issued by the Hong Kong Federation of Insurers (―HKFI) (which is a self-regulatory industry body) and approved by the Insurance Authority (―IA) specifies that insurers should seek to conduct their affairs honestly and fairly and in a manner consistent with the public's interests.167
  • OECD - Financial Education Project: Background and Implementation - [link] 
  • OECD - The Insurance Industry and Financial Education - [link]
  • Series - "Policy Issues in Insurance"
  • Observer - OECD Publication
    • 1982 - OECD - New Financial Instruments: Managing the Menagerie, Chadzynska, Hélène. The OECD Observer: Paris, Vol. 0, Iss. 157,  (Apr 1, 1989): p28. - [link] - <WishList>

1990s

  • early 1993 - set up a Group of Governmental Experts on Insurance Solvency
  • 1998 - OECD - Competition and Related Regulation Issues in the Insurance Industry - 272p

2000s

  • 2001 - OECD - oecd.org/finance/insurance/1813504.pdf
    •  Without the ability to appropriately assess the risks of individual companies, the general public may lose their confidence in the soundness of other insurers.
  • 2002 - OECD - Insurance Solvency Supervision:  OECD Country Profiles 
  • 2003 - OECD - Insurance and Expanding Systemic Risks
  • 2008 - OECD - Impact of the Financial Turmoil - 25p
    • Company Investments, Increased Surrenders
  • 2009 - OECD - Insurance Companies and the Financial Crisis, Sebastian Schich - 31p

2010s

  • 2011 - OECD - The Impact of the Financial Crisis on the Insurance Sector and Policy Responses
    • 2011 - OECD - Impact of the Financial Turmoil - Chapter - 25p
      • In considering the balance sheets risks of life insurers, it is important to recognise that their balance sheets have, in recent years, grown substantially due to high growth rates in unit-linked insurance products, which are investment-type products similar to mutual funds, where the investment risk resides with the policy holder, not the insurer (see Figure 13 for the proportion of gross premiums in 2008, or for the latest year available, attributable to unit-linked products in selected OECD countries).
        • To the extent that unit linked products make up a large share of insurer assets, market, credit, and interest rate risks are borne by policy holders, not by the insurers.
        • Life insurers that sold relatively risky products to customers with low risk tolerances may, as a result of the crisis, face increased reputational risk.
      • The Madoff scandal has revealed that unit-linked products of some European insurers had invested directly or indirectly in Madoff funds.
  • 2011 - OECD - G20 High-Level Principles on Financial Consumer Protection - 7p
  • 2013 - OECD - Policyholder Protection  Schemes: Selected Considerations - 64p
    • Policyholder Runs, Surrenders, Long-Term, Guaranty Funds
  • 2015 - OECD - Can pension funds and life insurance companies keep their promises? - Chapter 4 from OECD Business and Finance Outloo - 39p
    • Low interest rates, 
  • 2016 - OECD - The evolution of insurer portfolio investment strategies for long-term investing, by Helmut Gründl, Ming (Ivy) Dong, Jens Gal - 57p

The fact that the business of insurance is state regulated, rather than federally regulated, is the product of the United States “federalism” scheme of government rather than a conscious decision to favor state by state regulation over national regulation.

  • Under United States federalism, the Constitution recognizes two sovereigns, the state and the national government.
  • The presumption is that the state sovereign governs unless there is a nexus with interstate commerce.
  • First in 1868 and then twice thereafter, the United States Supreme Court held that the business of insurance was not interstate commerce, but rather local commerce to be governed by the states.
  • As a consequence, the states were free to regulate and tax insurers.
  • By the 1940s, taxation of insurers was the single largest source of revenue to the states.
  • Thus, when the Supreme Court reversed itself in 1944, ironically in an antitrust action under the federal Sherman Antitrust Act, and held that the business of insurance was “in or affecting interstate commerce”, the states faced the loss of a significant source of revenue.
  • Utilizing their own trade association, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (the “NAIC”), the states drafted and the next year with a few modifications Congress enacted legislation, the McCarran-Ferguson Act, exempting the business of insurance from federal antitrust laws to the extent regulated by state law.
  • Since 1945 the states in the United States have continued to be the regulators of insurance even as taxation of insurance has declined as a relative source of revenue to state treasuries.
  • Attached hereto as Appendix A is a summary of the McCarran-Ferguson Act and of recent judicial decisions interpreting the Act.  (p201)

1998 - OECD - Competition and Related Regulation Issues in the Insurance Industry - 272p