Members of the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents will gather in Washington, D.C., April 1 and 2 for their annual Federal Legislative Summit with the goal of reinforcing the need to maintain state-based insurance regulation amidst talk of change.

This is the 27th year for the event, where independent insurance agents from across the country visit Capitol Hill. This year’s event coincides with increasing talk of federal regulation for insurance in light of troubles with American International Group and as legislators and the Obama Administration continue talking about a major overhaul of the nation’s financial regulatory system.

Kenneth R. Auerbach

PIA National President Kenneth R. Auerbach said this year’s gathering of agents “will be very timely.”

“We will be meeting with members of Congress as they debate regulatory reforms designed to ensure that the financial crisis our nation is now dealing with is never allowed to happen again,” he said in a statement. “Our message is clear: state regulation of insurance has worked well and any regulatory reforms Congress enacts should build upon that state system, not undermine it.”

The first day of the summit will feature legislative briefings by PIA government staffers and on April 2, summit participants will hear from Norm Ornstein, a political analyst and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and participate in a video interview with National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ CEO Dr. Therese M. Vaughan.

Following those presentations, PIA members will head to the House and Senate to meet with lawmakers for the day, with a fundraising and awards dinner that evening.

“PIA’s legislative summit is particularly important this year, because we are opposing the efforts of advocates of federal regulation of insurance to portray their ideas as reform measures that will strengthen insurance regulation,” Auerbach said. “This is not the case. Proposals to create a federal insurance regulatory office and transfer most state authority to Washington, D.C. would weaken insurance regulation by undercutting the more stringent oversight provided by the states.”

Auerbach added that the PIA supports the NAIC‘s position that “any framework established to regulate financial stability must build upon, not displace, the successful state-based system of insurance regulation.”

“Our existing national system of state-based insurance regulation has performed well in safeguarding insurance companies and their stakeholders, including consumers, compared to the crisis in the federal regulatory system,” he said.

The PIA also supports more effective and successful federal systemic risk regulator for banking, securities and capital markets to coordinate with the existing national system of state-based insurance supervision.

“We need to encourage a balanced approach that increases the stability of all sectors, not toss the insurance sector and its reserves into the bubbling cauldron of financial chaos that resulted from inadequate and imprudent supervision at the federal level,” Auerbach said.

During their visit with House and Senate members, PIA members also plan to advocate for the creation of a national natural catastrophe plan, and improvements and advancements to the federal flood insurance and crop insurance programs, according to the organization.