It wants FIO to use its authority to identify different product markets and consumer segments — in addition to minority and low- and moderate-income communities and consumers — which are underserved for various products.

Another group created to look into the practices of the captive insurance industry, chaired by Washington, D.C., Insurance Commissioner William White, briefed FIO on the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC)'s work on captives by an NAIC subgroup. It is unclear if FIO is proceeding with its own investigation of captives or letting the NAIC work stand in.

FIO will likely press for more information, given the fact that New York regulators, who are represented on FACI, issued a strong broadside against the captives industry, made public right before the day of the most recent FACI meeting on June 14. They even called for a moratorium on the practices. The NAIC scoffed at that suggestion later that day.

Another FACI group looked at credit rating agencies and concluded that capital management decisions by carriers such as stock buybacks, debt to capital ratios, and dividend yields, as well as rate-making decisions are influenced significantly by the credit rating impacts.

As the inaugural FACI meeting March 30, 2012, McRaith said he hoped FACI would be a forum for discussion. “My hope is to have thoughtful discussion on one or two issues of the day, … we identify four, five, or six high-level issues this committee feels are important,” he said.

New York Superintendent of Financial Services Benjamin Lawsky said, “There is a risk of biting off more than we can chew and disappearing for two years and coming back with a 1,000-page report.”

There has been no such lengthy report, but at each open meeting there is an awkward allusion to waiting to hear more pointers once the Dodd-Frank-mandated FIO report addressing modernization of the industry is published. McRaith, at the last meeting, said the overdue report would come out sometime this summer, but indications that it would see the light day in the near future have been common since the report was due in late January 2012.