海角论坛

海角论坛 President and Virginia Insurance Commissioner Scott A. White welcomed attendees to the 海角论坛鈥檚 2026 Spring National Meeting on March 23 in a keynote address that focused on several of the organization鈥檚 strategic priorities for the year ahead. 

Along with sharing an update on risk-mitigation grant programs that several state insurance departments are spearheading amid increasingly severe natural disasters, Commissioner White highlighted a visit state insurance commissioners made over the weekend to the Dixon Trail neighborhood in Escondido, Calif. Dixon Trail is the first development built to meet the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety's (IBHS) Wildfire Prepared Home鈩� neighborhood-level wildfire resilience standard.  

鈥淲hat they saw as they walked along those streets wasn鈥檛 just individual wildfire-prepared homes," said Commissioner White. "They saw an entire wildfire-prepared neighborhood built on a blueprint that blended risk mitigation and modern building standards. And, hopefully, these homes are a potential glimpse into a more resilient future.鈥� 

Commissioner White also discussed the 海角论坛鈥檚 Homeowners Market Data Call, calling it 鈥渁 key part of our efforts to address affordability and availability challenges.鈥� 

Regarding state insurance regulators鈥� work to regulate insurers鈥� use of artificial intelligence, Commissioner White noted, 鈥淥ur approach at the 海角论坛 has been to strike the right balance. We don鈥檛 want to stand in the way of innovation that generally serves consumers. But we do want to make sure that it is used transparently, fairly, and in ways that hold up to scrutiny.鈥� 

He also discussed issues including state regulation in light of 鈥渢he changing investment risk profile of life insurers,鈥� describing a 鈥渟traightforward鈥� overall goal of ensuring 鈥渢hat the capital insurers hold reflects the risk they're actually taking.鈥�  

For more information about the 海角论坛鈥檚 2026 Spring National Meeting, follow us on social media and visit the 海角论坛鈥檚 Meetings and Events page. 

You can find Commissioner White鈥檚 remarks, as prepared for delivery, below: 

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Thank you, Commissioner Lara, for welcoming us and for the kind words. You鈥檙e a tough act to follow.  

So, let me begin by saying what an honor it is to serve as your president this year. We鈥檙e just a few months into 2026, and we鈥檙e already off to a productive start to the year.  

But today I want to focus on the work in front of us. I鈥檓 really excited to talk to you about the priorities of the 海角论坛 this year and where we鈥檙e focusing our attention. 

And there鈥檚 so much we could talk about鈥攚e have a lot going on. But I鈥檓 going to focus on our top three priorities, and within those priorities, the one or two areas I think will have the most impact when we look back a few years from now. 

I鈥檓 also going to piggyback off Commissioner Lara, I鈥檒l start with our work that addresses natural catastrophe risk and resiliency. We鈥檙e continuing to see climate-driven natural disasters have devastating impacts across the United States鈥攏ot just headline-making catastrophes but also the unnamed storms and extreme weather that are just as impactful on our communities.  

None more so than the L.A. wildfires last year, as we just heard from Commissioner Lara.  And as we gather here in California, I think back to the many commissioners who made the trip to Altadena last year to see firsthand the impact of the wildfires and the discussions that took place to learn how we can better protect our communities from future disasters.  

That learning continues. Just Saturday, we had more than 20 commissioners visit the Dixon Trail community in Escondido, California, about 30 miles north of here. What they saw as they walked along those streets wasn鈥檛 just individual wildfire-prepared homes. They saw an entire wildfire-prepared neighborhood built on a blueprint that blended risk mitigation and modern building standards. And, hopefully, these homes are a potential glimpse into a more resilient future. 

Let鈥檚 take a look at their visit.  

[Video] 

What you just saw is something I see daily in my work with the 海角论坛鈥攃ommissioners and regulators from across the country coming together to learn and take those leading-edge practices back to their states. 

And there鈥檚 no better example than these department-led risk-mitigation grant programs we鈥檝e been talking so much about these last few years. And what started in Alabama has spread to other parts of the country. Louisiana has in just a few short years provided grant funds for about 4,500 of the total 11,000 [IBHS] FORTIFIED鈩� roofs in that state and counting.  

States like New Mexico and California are developing programs to address wildfire risk. In Oklahoma, Minnesota, and Arkansas, grant programs have launched or are being developed to address the severe convective storm peril which has been driving natural catastrophe losses in the U.S.  

In total, there are now more than 20 insurance departments that have or are in the process of developing risk mitigation programs with the advisory and technical services of the 海角论坛鈥檚 CAT Center of Excellence team. 

And we know what makes these DOI grant programs so powerful鈥攊t鈥檚 their multiplier effect. Their impacts extend well beyond the thousands of homes that are built through grant funds. By building the ecosystem, we鈥檙e talking about the contractors, the standards, the consumer awareness. What we call the 鈥渃ulture of resilience.鈥�  

These DOI-led programs create the infrastructure for FORTIFIED鈩� roof construction to take hold even without grant support. The funding plants the seed; the market does the rest. 

We saw how this works when Hurricane Sally struck the Gulf Coast in 2020. Data from the storm told a clear story: homes with roofs built to FORTIFIED鈩� standards had far fewer claims, which is not surprising. And, maybe more importantly, the data showed that over 80% of FORTIFIED鈩� homes were built without grant funding. 

The question is how do we scale this? How do we go from the now nearly 100,000 total FORTIFIED鈩� homes to the tens of millions of homes throughout the U.S. that could benefit from these protections?  

This is the work that will occupy us in the coming years, work that the state DOIs are taking the lead in. While others are talking about the importance of property risk reduction, it is the states鈥攚ith assistance from the 海角论坛 and the CAT Center of Excellence鈥攖hat are actually out implementing risk reduction on the ground in their communities. 

I also want to spend a few minutes talking about the upcoming Homeowners Market Data Call and why this is such a key part of our efforts to address affordability and availability challenges. It is also to assess the effectiveness of mitigation programs and better educate consumers and legislators. 

You鈥檒l recall our first version of this was back in 2024. We decided to spend last year on a 鈥渞eset鈥� under Commissioner Yaworsky鈥檚 leadership, working to improve and refine it in a number of areas.  

To begin with, it will collect data from 2025 going all the way back to 2018. It will also capture roughly 98% of the market in most states, up from 80% in the first data call, and it extends beyond traditional homeowners policies. 

It鈥檚 been expanded to include more information designed to address the needs of a particular state, whether it鈥檚 wildfire deductibles or non-renewals because of particular hazards. 

It鈥檚 really hard to overemphasize how impactful it is to have this ZIP-code-level data at our fingertips. We can now do so much with it to gain insights into our market we didn鈥檛 have before. It opens the world to layering this information with other data sets, such as Census data, FEMA hazard maps, and CAT models.  

We can better understand how insurers differentiate the cost of insurance by geographic region within a state. Or for states with FORTIFIED鈩� programs, where to focus those efforts. 

Armed with this information, states can begin to respond to events in real-time. They can layer in homeowners data to an approaching hurricane, for example, to better understand where potential losses may occur and the solvency impact of the companies writing in those areas.  They can provide much-needed information to the emergency management community.  

So, with this data call, we have a submission deadline for June for the data. And we also plan to issue a public report in early 2027, after the public and interested parties, of course, have had the opportunity to weigh in. 

This is an important development. It will allow us to better tell our own story based on what the data tells us, instead of having to react, as we so often do, to stories in the press鈥攐ftentimes based mostly on anecdotes. Or the latest academic paper or other reports that purport to understand our markets better than we do as regulators.   

So, let鈥檚 next turn to insurers鈥� use of AI. There are few developments in recent memory that have generated more excitement鈥攐r more unease鈥攖han artificial intelligence. The use of AI is moving fast across every sector of the economy, including the insurance industry.  

We all recognize the potential benefits for insurers: greater efficiency, more accurate risk assessment, faster claims processing.  

But the risks are also real and must be managed. Our approach at the 海角论坛 has been to strike the right balance. We don鈥檛 want to stand in the way of innovation that generally serves consumers. But we do want to make sure that it is used transparently, fairly, and in ways that hold up to scrutiny.  

So, we鈥檝e spent the past five years or so doing the hard preparatory work: developing core principles for responsible use of AI and then translating those principles into a model bulletin that provides guidance to the industry on their use of AI and how to comply with our existing laws.   

That brings us to our next important phase, which began last year and will be the focus this year, as we move from principles and guidance to actual implementation. 

I鈥檓 referring to our development of what we call the AI Systems Evaluation Tool, which gives insurance departments the ability to assess how an insurer is using AI when they walk through the door for an examination. 

For the first time, we're going to have a structured, consistent way to understand in real time how insurers are using AI systems and the effectiveness of their governance and oversight of these systems. 

We鈥檙e in the early stages of a pilot this year, and we expect that the experience of the pilot will give us insights to improve the tool in hopes of adopting it by the Fall National Meeting. 

The third strategic priority I鈥檒l touch on addresses the changing investment risk profile of life insurers. We're all familiar by now with the significant transformation that has occurred as life insurers have shifted more of their balance sheets towards alternative investments and relied more on offshore reinsurance arrangements.  

This has resulted in a meaningfully different risk profile for an industry that millions of Americans depend on for their retirement security. 

There's been a lot of good work done in this area over the last five years, much of it under the rubric of the insurer investment framework adopted in 2024.  

A key part of that work is making sure our risk-based capital framework keeps pace with how life insurers are investing, and accounting for newer or emerging assets like collateralized loan obligations, or CLOs.  

Our RBC Model Governance Task Force, created last year under Past President Jon Godfread鈥檚 leadership, does just that鈥攂y updating and strengthening the governance framework for RBC requirements.  

Our key deliverable last year was to develop principles to guide future adjustments to our RBC requirements, and our focus this year will be on identifying potential gaps within our RBC formulas. 

The overall goal is straightforward: make sure that the capital insurers hold reflects the risk they're actually taking. 

In addition, as insurers continue to rely more on other jurisdictions to back U.S. policyholder obligations through the use of offshore reinsurance, we鈥檝e taken steps to make sure there are adequate reserves backing these obligations.   

So last year, we adopted a rule that will test for reserve adequacy and provide regulators with greater transparency into the reserves and assets supporting the ceded business. (I want to give a hat tip to Fred Anderson for his leadership on this work.) 

Before I close, I want to step back from the policy and the frameworks for a moment and talk about why this work matters. And I mention this in connection with a new initiative the 海角论坛 is launching this year to comprehensively assess our current market regulatory framework. This work is going to be important, but as we move forward, I don鈥檛 want us to lose sight of what market regulation is ultimately for.  

It鈥檚 important to always keep top of mind that behind every policy, every claim, every coverage dispute, there's a person who, if they paid their premiums faithfully, trusted that when something went wrong, they would be protected. And our job is to make sure that trust is honored. 

And that lesson was brought home to me early in my career. I鈥檓 not going to tell you what year it was. But let's just say I was more concerned at the time over the impact of Y2K than the threat of a serious cyber-attack.  

My wife and I and our one-month-old daughter had moved back to Virginia from St. Louis to be closer to our family. I had begun looking for work but was still waiting for the results of the Virginia bar exam. And to make ends meet, I found a part-time job at the Virginia Bureau of Insurance as a research analyst. I鈥檇 never given much thought to insurance, except I knew from my job at the firm in St. Louis that it was a key source of funds when a case was settled or decided in court. 

I remember my first day there walking to the fifth floor of the building, a dimly lit room filled with rows of cubicles, one of which I sat in with just a code book and legal pad on my desk, doing research on topics like mold exclusion and uninsured motorist coverage.  

Pretty mind-numbing stuff. But as I sat there, I began to overhear on the other side of my cubicle all these telephone calls coming in, and I soon figured out they were from consumers who were upset or had questions about their insurance coverage. 

I still remember to this day the level of distress or worry鈥攐r even fear鈥攖hat came through on some of the calls, even though I couldn鈥檛 hear what they were saying. 

A consumer was upset that their homeowners policy had been nonrenewed even though they鈥檇 never filed a claim, for example, or a consumer鈥檚 medical claim had been denied, and they worried about how they would ever find the money to pay the hospital bill.   

And these were not abstract policy questions. These were people in genuine distress trying to navigate a system they didn't fully understand. 

The other thing I remember was the professionalism and expertise of the Bureau employees who took these calls. I remember admiring how calm they were, how knowledgeable, and how they treated every person on the other end of that line with patience and respect.  

I moved to another part of the building a few weeks later, but that experience left a real impression on me. And ultimately it was a factor in my decision not to immediately return to the private sector. 鈥淢aybe,鈥� I thought, 鈥淚鈥檒l consider sticking around at the Bureau for a little while and see how things develop.鈥�  

A couple of decades later, I feel privileged every day to have made this a career, being able to help consumers and doing my small part to help foster a strong, stable insurance marketplace. 

And that brings me back to our market regulation initiative. Our aim here is to develop a strategic, forward-thinking roadmap to determine if today鈥檚 market conduct regulatory framework has the data, the system, the tools, and the supervisory approaches needed to oversee a rapidly evolving industry. 

This work will occur in our Market Regulation and Consumer Affairs (D) Committee, and it鈥檚 going to be led by Director Gillespie and Director Nelson. We hope to share proposed recommendations for enhancements later this year.  

Our 2026 priorities are not only domestic issues, but rather ones of interest around the globe. As work progresses, we will continue to share our experiences and expertise with, as well as learn from, our international counterparts. 

Along those lines, I am very pleased to announce that the board of ASSAL, the Association of Insurance Supervisors of Latin America, has recently approved the 海角论坛 to join as an Associate Member. Steps such as this help further our relationships with our international partners and highlight the important role state insurance supervisors play at the global level. 

In closing, I look forward to working together with all of you, both during this meeting and throughout the rest of the year. The discussions, debates, and conversations we鈥檒l be having to advance the work of protecting policyholders and promoting sound, stable insurance markets鈥攖his is how we move forward, and it鈥檚 always been the strength of this organization. 

Thank you again for joining. And with that, we are adjourned. 

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