NAIC Taps Missouri Director Huff as New President-Elect
February 10, 2015 by Thomas Harman, associate editor, BestWeek: Tom.Harman@ambest.com
WASHINGTON – Missouri Insurance Director John Huff has been elected as the new National Association of Insurance Commissioners president-elect during a plenary session vote.
Huff fills the president-elect post that was vacated when new Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf decided to replace Insurance Commissioner Michael Consedine. Teresa Miller was appointed as his replacement (Best’s News Service, Jan. 13, 2015).
Huff defeated Kentucky Insurance Commissioner and current NAIC Vice President Sharon Clark — who was next in the line of succession — to win the post, Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney said in an email.
Huff is the former NAIC representative to the Financial Stability Oversight Council and in that role opposed the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s designation of both MetLife and Prudential Financial, Inc. as a systemically important financial institution (Best’s News Service, Dec. 19, 2014).
He has played a significant role in several NAIC initiatives and in January, he was named to serve for another year as chair of the Financial Regulation Standards and Accreditation Committee, which establishes and maintains standards in promoting financial solvency rules for insurance companies and evaluates the NAIC’s accreditation program. Currently, the panel is in the process of considering whether and how to clarify accreditation standards when treating some captive insurers, variable annuities and long-term care reinsurance in the same manner for accreditation purposes as multi-state insurers.
Huff also chairs the NAIC reinsurance task force, which in December recommended reinsurers in seven nations regulated by the Bermuda Monetary Authority, the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, the French Autorite de Control Prudentiel et de Resolution; the Central Bank of Ireland and the United Kingdom’s Prudential Regulation Authority of the Bank of England to be certified for reduced reinsurance collateral under the NAIC Credit for Reinsurance Model Law. The NAIC Executive Committee approved the recommendations less than a week later (Best’s News Service, Dec. 11, 2014).
And Huff chairs the governance review task force, which had been heading the discussions over how to address NAIC’s corporate governance methods.
Before entering public service, Huff spent 11 years as an executive with insurers and reinsurers, including Swiss Re and GE Insurance Solutions, where he led global teams and was stationed in London and Zurich.
Clark’s office confirmed that she would remain as vice president, to which she was elected during the NAIC’s Fall National Meeting in November. Ted Nickel, Wisconsin insurance commissioner, remains as secretary/treasurer.
