Insurance industry threats posed by increased climate risk, protecting consumers from deceptive and misleading insurance marketing, and shepherding regulation around artificial intelligence and cyber risks are among the top 2025 priorities at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
The NAIC recently announced that its committees have outlined their strategies to implement these key initiatives and charges for 2025. This announcement comes a week after NAIC released its 2025 roadmap: “Securing Tomorrow: Advancing State-Based Regulation,” designed to support the mission of state insurance regulators to protect consumers and monitor industry solvency.
The Executive Committee, along with the standing committee chairs and co-chairs, will lead the organization’s efforts to address issues impacting today’s insurance market and secure a resilient market for the future.
As part of their multi-faceted work plans, state insurance regulators will continue addressing one of the most pressing issues for consumers, industry professionals, and communities today: growing risks posed by severe weather.
“As the market navigates challenges like inflation, rising construction costs, and increasingly severe natural disasters, we are seeing these factors alter the insurance landscape, influencing operations and consumer satisfaction,” said NAIC President-Elect and Virginia Insurance Commissioner Scott A. White. “Adopted in 2024, the National Climate Resilience Strategy for Insurance will drive faster and more effective risk reduction by state insurance regulators in 2025 and beyond. As part of our efforts, state insurance regulators will continue to emphasize pre-disaster mitigation to reduce climate impacts and assist consumers in pursuing possible premium reductions.”
In addition to catastrophe resiliency efforts, the NAIC committees will focus on initiatives such as:
• Cybersecurity Incident and Market-Disruption Frameworks: Developing a framework to evaluate the impacts of insurance cybersecurity events and enhance coordination among state insurance departments for the benefit of consumers.
• Enhancing Consumer Privacy Protections: Continued work on amending the Privacy of Consumer Financial and Health Information Regulation (Model #672), including a full draft for public comment. The amended regulation aims to increase privacy protections for consumers as technology continues to rapidly evolve.
• Enforcing Annuity Protections for Consumers: Developing training on enhanced standards to ensure compliance and accountability with regulations to ensure consumers understand their annuity products and that agents and insurers act in the consumers’ best interest.
• Monitoring Implementation of the Aggregation Method (AM): Following state insurance regulators’ successful work to develop the AM as a group capital approach for Internationally Active Insurance Groups (IAIGs) that is more appropriate for the U.S. insurance market and supervisory regime, NAIC Members will focus on the AM’s implementation.
• Protecting Consumers’ Access to Health Insurance Options: Examining the small group health insurance market, and issues such as prescription drug coverage, Medicare Advantage marketing, the impact of prior approval, and coordinating with our federal partners to protect health insurance consumers.
• Risk-Based Capital (RBC) Modernization: Modernizing Risk-Based Capital formulas, which ensure companies can keep their financial promises to policyholders. The changes will strengthen oversight and regulation as the marketplace and the risks facing consumers and companies evolve.
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