Jefferson City, Mo. - The Missouri Department of Insurance hosted close to 400 insurance professionals at the third Director's Regulatory Summit last Thursday in Kansas City. The Summit allowed representatives of Missouri's insurance industry to meet state regulators, discuss best practices for compliance with state insurance laws and learn about emerging issues impacting the industry.

The Summit featured breakout sessions and roundtable discussions with industry and department leadership. The daylong conference also gave industry representatives an opportunity to speak directly to their regulators.

"This was our third Summit and each one has further developed a frank dialogue on emerging issues and trends between regulators and the insurance industry," said John Huff, director of the Insurance Department. “This Summit’s topics, particularly the sessions on the cyber insurance market and NARAB II, will have significant impacts to the insurance industry.”

State insurance commissioners from Colorado, Kansas and Minnesota joined Huff along with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners COO Andy Beal, National Insurance Producer Registry Executive Director Karen Hornig, and NARAB nominees Robert Suglia and Heather Steinmiller for the keynote address on the National Association of Registered Agents and Brokers Act (NARAB II), a major initiative enacted by the federal government in 2015 establishing a national clearinghouse to streamline insurance non-resident producer licensing throughout the country.

A Summit highlight was an overview of the state of the economy by Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank CEO and President Esther George.

Veteran regulators from the department’s Consumer Affairs, Market Regulation and Company Regulation divisions covered several topics, including:

• An overview of the various Missouri markets, highlighting competitive and challenging markets.
• Confidentiality and regulatory information sharing.
• Innovations impacting the industry - predictive analytics and autonomous vehicles.
• 2016 legislative briefing
• Managing enterprise risk management.
• PBR 101. 
• Federal and case law update.
• Life and health compliance connection.
• The property and casualty pulse. 
• Property and casualty compliance connection.
• Representing the client in regulatory matters.
• The life and health pulse.
• Getting social with consumers. 
• Under the microscope: managing market conduct risk.
• What’s on the horizon of insurance regulation? 

New to this Summit was a half-day Insurance Producer track.  The producer track featured topics and issues of interest for licensed insurance agents.  Two sessions formed the foundation of the producer track - "Producer Investigations and Disciplinary Actions 101” and “Trends & Transformations Impacting Today’s Producer.” 

The Summit ended with a session on cybersecurity and the cyber insurance market.  Data breaches are front page news nearly every day and, as a result the cyber insurance market is growing significantly.  The session’s goal was discuss the risks the insurance industry faces, what that risk means in terms of consumer and financial harm and the current status of the cyber insurance market.