Nonadmitted And Reinsurance Reform Act Of 2006

NONADMITTED AND REINSURANCE REFORM ACT OF 2006 -- (House of Representatives - September 27, 2006)

Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5637) to streamline the regulation of nonadmitted insurance and reinsurance, and for other purposes, as amended.

The Clerk read as follows:

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Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, today is a historic moment in the evolution of our insurance marketplace. The Nonadmitted and Reinsurance Reform Act is an important reform for consumers, helping American homeowners and businesses to obtain more available and more affordable insurance coverage. It will especially help consumers in high-cost areas, such as coastal regions and urban cities vulnerable to terrorist risk. But equally important, this bill is the next critical step in a long journey towards comprehensive reform of how insurance is regulated at the State and Federal levels.

In 1995, I chaired some of the first hearings in the new Republican Congress on insurance reform and helped shape the largest financial services modernization bill of the last decade, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. We finally got GLBA enacted in the waning days of 1999, but it wasn't easy. The Congress had been working on regulatory reform for some 66 years, enough time for three generations of lobbyists to put their children through college.

The debate on GLBA underscored the importance of the financial services industry to our country and the critical need for additional reform. To facilitate further legislative reforms and continue building on our hard-fought success, the House leadership created the Committee on Financial Services, which I have had the privilege of chairing for nearly its 6 years in existence.

Since then, we have had dozens of hearings with hundreds of witnesses on insurance regulation. We have heard that, starting back in 1871, the State insurance regulators committed to modernizing their regulations to provide for more uniformity and coordination and that they continue to hope to some day reach that goal. We have sorted through numerous State and Federal proposals to address the problems of a sluggish insurance marketplace beset by inefficient regulation and the threats of terrorism and other catastrophic disasters. And we have completed numerous investigations of how insurance providers and regulators have lived up to their promises to consumers and the marketplace.

After Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the heads of the State insurance regulators approached our committee to work together in forging several formal policy papers making a commitment towards uniformity and reform, culminating in an agreement to pursue Federal legislation to help the States achieve their own modernization goals.

These policy discussions culminated in the State Modernization and Regulatory Transparency Act, or SMART, as a template for further reform. Two of the SMART titles that appeared to have the greatest bipartisan consensus now form the basis of the legislation before us being moved forward by the leadership of Representative Ginny Brown-Waite, Representative Moore, Capital Market Subcommittee Chairman Baker, Representative Wasserman Schultz, and several others.

Insurance reform is never easy and never quick. Believe me, it is never quick. Each success that we have had has been the result of strong bipartisan cooperation in working together to overcome the turf and vested interests that will always cling to the status quo.

I am proud though to have had the opportunity to work with my colleagues to finish one stage of modernization and help launch the next, and I wish my colleagues well as they continue down this long journey towards modernization of insurance regulation.

I again compliment the bill cosponsors, subcommittee Chairman Baker and Ranking Members FRANK and KANJORSKI for their help and leadership. I look forward to passing this measure to improve the availability and affordability of insurance and taking another giant leap forward in this historical step towards insurance reform.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Speaker, this was, again, in the great tradition of our committee, a good bipartisan effort by a lot of members that have been mentioned heretofore, and it is really what makes our committee very special. I am very proud of the work product that was put out. It is a somewhat controversial subject, the overall issue; but to be able to take a chunk of this, a very important chunk, and move it separately I think was a wise decision that our staff participated in as well as the members.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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