Comments to NCOIL's Property and Casualty Insurance Committee

National Conference of Insurance Legislators
Property and Casualty Insurance Committee
VIA ELECTRONIC MAIL

Members of the Committee:

The Heartland Institute is a 28-year-old national nonprofit education and research organization, headquartered in Chicago and dedicated to discovering, developing, and promoting free-market solutions to a range of social and economic problems. The Center on Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate, which has been the financial services arm of Heartland's research team since 2010, proactively puts forward sensible and responsible market-based approaches to financial regulation through its own offices in Chicago; Austin, Texas; Columbus, Ohio; Tallahassee, Florida; and Washington, D.C.

As an organization, Heartland has long taken an interest in both catastrophe insurance and free markets. In this context, we are pleased to offer the committee our analysis of and recommendations concerning problems posed to state insurance markets by natural disasters. The following comments describe the problems with catastrophe insurance as we see them and then offer eight particular comments we hope the committee will keep in mind in crafting its final proposals.