Julie Mix McPeak Takes Over As NAIC President
December 6, 2017 by Allison Bell
Julie Mix McPeak is now the president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
McPeak, the Tennessee insurance commissioner, took over as the head of the Kansas City, Missouri-based regulator group earlier this week, at the NAIC’s fall national meeting in Honolulu.
NAIC members also elected Eric Cioppa of Maine president-elect, Eric Cioppa of Maine vice president and Raymond Farmer of South Carolina vice president.
Gordon Ito, the Hawaii commissioner, was elected secretary-treasurer.
Ted Nickel, the Wisconsin commissioner, will be the immediate past president.
The NAIC has no direct authority of its own to change state insurance laws and regulations, but states often look to it for ideas about how to proceed. It also helps state insurance regulators communicate with Congress, and with financial services regulators in the United States and outside the United States.
McPeak is taking over the leader of the group as Congress is debating major changes in laws that affect the life insurance and health insurance markets, and as regulators at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Treasury Department continue to hover over state insurance regulators’ turf.
McPeak has already been a visible player at the NAIC.
She has worked on issues such as life insurers’ shift to principles-based reserving, efforts to encourage some insurance agents to get securities licenses, and efforts to implement, improve and replace the Affordable Care Act.
In September, for example, McPeak was one of the insurance commissioners who appeared at a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on the precarious state of the individual major medical market.
McPeak was appointed to the Tennessee commissioner’s post by Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, in 2011.
McPeak has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Kentucky and a law degree from the University of Louisville. She has worked as an insurance lawyer in the private sector as well as serving as an official in the Kentucky state government. At one point, she was the general counsel to the Kentucky Personnel Cabinet.
