New: Pinpoint in DC Journal: “Eric Ventimiglia: Insurance Regulators Accountable to No One”

This week, Pinpoint Executive Director Eric Ventimiglia published the following op-ed in DC Journal:

"Nobody elects the NAIC. If one of its rules raises your premium, there is no one on your ballot to hold responsible. ... Before any NAIC text becomes the law in your state, your elected lawmakers should have to read it, debate it and vote on it in public." – Eric Ventimiglia, Executive Director, Pinpoint Policy Institute

Read the full op-ed below:

Eric Ventimiglia: Insurance Regulators Accountable to No One

DC Journal

Eric Ventimiglia

October 20, 2026

If you own a car or home, you have probably opened a renewal notice lately and winced. Premiums are up almost everywhere. When that happens, most assume someone is accountable: a state insurance commissioner or an elected official who answers for it.

However, the rules behind your policy are written somewhere else. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, or NAIC, is a private corporation in Kansas City. It brings in more than $160 million a year and employs more than 550 people. Most Americans have never heard of it. They should, for three reasons.

First, the NAIC writes the rules. Its staff and committees draft the model laws and accounting standards that insurers in every state must follow. Many of those texts become binding without a single state legislator reading them.

Here’s how that happens. A state passes a law that says, in effect, “follow the NAIC’s document.” Whatever the document says becomes binding, and in some cases that includes policy changes after the law was voted on. And for states that hesitate, the NAIC runs an accreditation program that requires them to adopt certain NAIC model laws, or risk losing the seal of approval other states rely on to do business.

Congress left insurance regulation to the states in 1945. The idea was that a commissioner in Richmond or Sacramento would answer to the people paying the premiums. However, nobody elects the NAIC. If one of its rules raises your premium, there is no one on your ballot to hold responsible.

Second, you help pay for it. About 94 percent of the NAIC’s revenue comes from fees that insurance companies pay to file with it and from selling access to its data. State regulators, who are themselves NAIC’s members, require companies to use it without the ability to shop around or competitively bid for the services.

Those costs get passed along to consumers. While the NAIC’s fees do not show up as a line item on your bill, they are built into what you pay for coverage. You never see those fees, you never agreed to them, and you can’t opt out of them.

Third, it holds sensitive data with no one to answer to. This summer the NAIC was hit by a cyberattack that exposed 260,000 regulatory filings from the companies that insure you. Those companies were required to file them, but the custodian faces no real accountability when it fails to protect them.

None of this means that the insurance industry should go unregulated. Every market needs good regulators. Regulators should answer to the public, and states already know how to do that. Michigan bars the NAIC from charging its insurers fees without the state commissioner’s sign-off, and requires a yearly report to the legislature that includes executive pay. Other states should do the same and require the NAIC to open its books and justify the fees it charges.

Before any NAIC text becomes the law in your state, your elected lawmakers should have to read it, debate it and vote on it in public. That is how the rest of the government works. Insurance rules should too.

The typical consumer does not need to become an expert on insurance regulation. Just ask your state legislator one question: who actually writes the rules? If they cannot answer, that tells you everything.

Eric Ventimiglia serves as Executive Director of Pinpoint Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit educational organization dedicated to promoting and defending the essential pillars of American prosperity.