The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) Rating Agency Working Group will hold a hearing on September 24 to speak with the Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations to determine whether there has been an over-reliance on the ratings they issue. The Rating Agency Working Group will ask specifically about structured securities that received satisfactory ratings from the top credit rating agencies, then experienced significant losses in value. Hampton Finer, deputy superintendent and chief economist at the New York Insurance Department, says NAIC could decide to use “another vendor to do some calculations and use those to develop an appropriate capital charge [for insurers.]”
September 15, 2009