It was not Congress' intent that federal regulators "supplant state-based regulation with a bank-centric capital regime," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, says in a Nov. 26 letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and other U.S. banking regulators.

Collins is the author of the "Collins Amendment" in the Dodd Frank Act, which requires bank holding companies to be subject to certain capital requirements. Insurers and NAIC staff have said they have had conversations with Collins' staff and requested she tell the Fed her intent was not to subject insurers to strict bank capital standards if the Fed was their prudential regulator. In October, some Senators made that case, and now Collins is adding to their collective voice. 

Her letter tells the crafters of capital rules that insurance companies should be treated differently from banks, and her intent was not to have them treated the same, a point which the industry and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners have been making to the Fed and others. Washington lobbyists had hoped Collins would chime in, and now she has, a day before a scheduled hearing on Basel III capital standards implementation before a joint hearing before the Insurance, Housing and Community Opportunity and Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Subcommittees.