Around the PIA Western Alliance States – Week of January 27, 2025
Published January 28, 2025 at 1:31 PM · News Releases and Bulletins
Idaho — A wildfire Risk Pool and Grant Program: The Idaho Legislature is looking at House Bill 17. It sets up a wildfire risk pool and a grant program designed to reduce property insurance costs and to help promote wildfire risk mitigation.
If passed, the Idaho Wildfire Risk Mitigation and Stabilization Pool will be set up. It will be run by a 12-member board. The board will include representatives from insurance, forestry, forest product industries, consumer advocates, other fire officials and legislators.
Funding will be from a 25% premium tax topped off by a $113 million annual threshold, excess stamping fees, grants and money from fire mitigation projects.
Insurers might be charged with a contribution to the fund but it hasn’t been specified.
The American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA) has offered support but isn’t sure about the mandatory assessment to insurers if the fund suffers catastrophic losses.
“APCIA would like to see the mitigation funding program move forward, and APCIA continues to be engaged in discussions in hopes of negotiating amendments to alleviate members’ concerns related to the high-risk pool program,” the APCIA said.
Source link: Insurance Business America — https://bit.ly/4htjkS1
Oregon — The Oregon Division of Financial Regulation recently announced the following permanent rulemaking: ID 1-2025: Amending OAR 836-150-0040 to add ORP payment parameters for plan year 2025
Adopted: 836-150-0040
Rule Summary: Amended to include payment parameters for plan year 2025 (attachment point of $103,000;
reinsurance cap of $1,000,000; and coinsurance rate of 50%), while deleting the provisions related to plan year 2020.
Filed: January 16, 2025
Effective: January 16, 2025
Oregon — Oregon Division of Financial Regulation joins $106 million multistate settlement with Vanguard over big tax bills, remediation to investors: The Oregon Division of Financial Regulation (DFR) announced today that it joined a taskforce of state securities regulators and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a $106 million settlement with Vanguard Marketing Corporation (VMC) and The Vanguard Group, Inc. (Vanguard) for failing to supervise certain registered persons and failing to disclose potential tax consequences to investors following a change in investment minimums for certain target date retirement funds.
The settlement stems from a three-year multi-state taskforce investigation coordinated through the North American Securities Administrators Association’s enforcement section committee to conduct a comprehensive investigation, parallel to a concurrent investigation by the SEC.
The investigation revealed that in 2020, Vanguard lowered the investment minimums for its Institutional Target Retirement Funds (TRFs). As a result of the lowered investment minimums, a large number of retirement plan investors redeemed their Investor TRF shares to purchase Institutional TRF shares. The large number of redemptions caused Vanguard to sell highly appreciated assets in the Investor TRF, which triggered significant capital gains taxes for hundreds of thousands of retail investors who remained invested in the Investor TRF.
Vanguard did not disclose the potential capital gains and tax implications to Investor TRF shareholders, which was a consequence of the migration of shareholders from the Investor TRF to the Institutional TRF.
“It’s vital that people who invest their money have confidence in the companies they do business with,” said TK Keen, DFR administrator. “As state regulators, we are going to hold those companies accountable when they make large scale changes that impact their customers, particularly when they don’t adequately notify their customers about those changes.”
The Vanguard Group, Inc. is the parent company of Vanguard Marketing Corporation, a FINRA- and state-registered broker-dealer. Vanguard markets and sells target retirement funds to investors who hold shares in qualified accounts that offer special tax treatment, including deferred taxes, as well as to investors who hold shares in taxable accounts. Historically, the amount of capital gains distributions and resulting tax liability for shareholders in Investor TRFs has been modest. The SEC will notify the investors who were affected by this action and will administer the remediation payments through its Fair Fund program to compensate investors for the capital gains taxes.
If you have any questions or concerns about your financial investments or institutions, please contact DFR’s consumer advocates at 1-888-877-4894 (toll-free) or email dfr.financialserviceshelp@dcbs.oregon.gov.
Washington — Treat but no transport survey reminder: The 2024 Legislature enacted Substitute Senate Bill 5986 (SSB 5986). Section 13 of this law directs the OIC to contract for actuarial analysis on the cost, potential cost savings, and total net costs or savings of covering services provided by ground ambulance services organizations (GASOs) when a GASO is dispatched to the scene of an emergency and the person is treated but is not transported to a hospital or behavioral health emergency services provider.
Lewis and Ellis (L&E) and their subcontractor Public Consulting Group (PCG) were selected for this contract and have begun data collection efforts to assess whether and how treat but no transport services are provided by GASOs in Washington state. The survey included in this email is the primary data collection tool that will be used by our contractors.
This survey is critical for gathering information directly from GASOs about how treat but no transport services are currently being rendered, the cost of these services, and the benefits and drawbacks to potentially covering these services through private health insurance plans.
The Lewis & Ellis team recognizes that departments might not currently bill for Treat-no-Transport services. We still encourage you to indicate that you provide Treat-no-Transport services if you dispatch an ambulance to a scene, render treatment on site, and do not ultimately transport patients (even if you are not billing for the service). Through this effort and your participation, we hope to gather information about the cost of these services and the benefits of potentially covering these services through private health insurance plans.
The survey is available here: https://bit.ly/4gkMpO3
Survey responses are due on February 4, 2025, by 11:59 p.m.
If you have any questions about this survey, please contact PCG at WATNT@pcgus.com.
PCG is also offering office hours for anyone who has questions about the survey:
Thursday, January 30, 2025, at 11:00 a.m.: https://bit.ly/3CvQ0Lb
For general questions about the treat but no transport analysis, please contact policy@oic.wa.gov.