Coordinating body of US state insurance regulators, harmonising standards in a market supervised at state level.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners is the body that brings together the insurance commissioners of the fifty US states, the District of Columbia and the territories. In the United States, insurance is regulated at state rather than federal level, a historical particularity that creates a patchwork of regulations. The NAIC has no direct binding power, but it develops model laws and standards that states then adopt, fostering de facto harmonisation. It notably develops risk-based capital requirements, reserving principles and solvency supervision frameworks, distinct from the European Solvency II regime. For an insurer operating in the United States, compliance means navigating between each state's own requirements and the standards coordinated by the NAIC. For the international observer, the NAIC is the reference interlocutor for the US market in discussions on global standards, where the coexistence of state and international approaches raises equivalence debates.
An insurer operating across several US states must contend with the risk-based capital requirements coordinated by the NAIC and applied state by state.
NAIC, National Association of Insurance Commissioners, régulateur assurance américain