Rep. Paul Kanjorski, (D-PA), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises, announced his plans during a hearing on insurance regulation before his panel yesterday.
Before his announcement, Kanjorski said the Treasury Department’s recently unveiled plan for financial services regulatory reform contained some ideas he liked and others he didn’t. But one idea he was “especially pleased” to see in the blueprint was Treasury’s call for an office of insurance oversight.
“The status quo on insurance regulation no longer works,” says Kanjorski, who went on to say that he has long thought that the federal government lacks the necessary expertise to deal with insurance-related issues such as those that arose from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.
The new bill was praised by Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), who is co-sponsoring legislation that would create an OFC system.