He will note that two bills are of most concern to PIA. One would repeal the McCarran-Ferguson Act's limited antitrust exemption for the insurance industry, while the other would create federal regulation under an optional federal charter.

“All this is happening at the same time that several state attorneys general continue their attempt to legislate how our industry operates by judicial fiat,” Mr. Brevik plans to say. “They are using a few settlement agreements to try to ban contingent commissions industrywide and impose legally flawed disclosure requirements that would create compliance problems for independent insurance agents.”

He will add that these challenges are requiring PIA to fight on several fronts simultaneously–opposing federal regulation in Congress while defending contingent commissions in court and with state insurance departments.

“The McCarran repeal proposal is very dangerous because it would effectively negate Congress' 1945 designation of the states as regulators of the business of insurance,” according to Mr. Brevik. “This would throw all disputes between overlapping state and federal systems into the courts. It is a blueprint for chaos in the insurance marketplace.”

Mr. Brevik also will note that it is “interesting to see some of the advocates of optional federal charters in a quandary about McCarran. At first, some of them wanted to get Congress to pair a repeal of McCarran with passage of an optional federal charter, but quickly changed their strategy when they realized the extent of the damage a repeal of McCarran would do to the industry.”