The Future of Insurance – Andrew Mais, Commissioner, Connecticut Insurance Department

Andrew N. Mais was nominated by Governor Ned Lamont to be Connecticut's 33rd Insurance Commissioner. Mais is President-Elect and has served on the Executive Committee of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners since 2021. He currently serves on the International Relations, Property & Casualty, and Financial Regulation Standards committees. He also serves on the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) Macroprudential and Executive Committees and on their Insurance Capital Standards Task Force.

The IAIS is the international standard-setting body responsible for developing and assisting in the supervision of the insurance sector.

Mais has led discussions in several forums on race, diversity, and inclusion at the state level and within the insurance industry and in insurance practices. He has also joined the efforts led by Governor Ned Lamont and Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz to address social inequities in Connecticut, including the Council on Women and Girls and cultural competency initiatives.

Mais is also Co-Chair of the NAIC's Special Executive Committee on Race and Insurance, charged with conducting research and analyzing issues of diversity and inclusion within the insurance sector.

Mais previously was a member of Deloitte's Center for Financial Services, providing industry-leading thought leadership and insight on US and international regulatory affairs.

Prior to that, he was a Director at the New York State Insurance Department. There he served four governors as part of the Department's senior leadership team through numerous events including the financial crisis of 2008 and major state and federal changes in health insurance regulations and laws.

Even outside the government, Mais dedicated much of his life to public service. He most recently served as chair of the Council on Ethics for the town of Wilton, CT, where he lives. Other recent service includes the Maritime Aquarium of Norwalk; the American Red Cross; the Board of Finance of the Town of Wilton; and the Rotary Club of Wilton.

Highlights from the Show

• Commissioner Mais opened with the mentality that they are open at the Department, and that we are all in this together across the industry
• He believes we do not do a good job marketing ourselves as an industry and how much it has to offer people
• He has been on the regulator side through some major challenges in the industry, including the Great Financial Crisis and COVID
• Thinking about how to be innovative and supportive of change, you have to start at the core mission of regulators to protect consumers and the industry to protect people and help them recover from loss
  • Regulators also have to protect competition and health in the market, and that takes innovation
  • A precursor of innovation is a willingness and appetite to fail
• He's seeing a movement to reduce friction, like easier Life insurance pre-underwriting processes to a move to risk mitigation like we're seeing on Cyber
  • The Department in Connecticut is keeping this in mind as they consider the flexibility they need to support these efforts
• Connecticut has been very collaborative and supportive of innovation in the industry, which Commissioner Mais sees as a function of a number of things, including the level of education in the state, the amount of insurance activity in the state, decisions of the administration to collaborate across departments and with business, etc
• Climate Change is on his mind, given that CT has the second highest concentration of coastal insured property in the country, so he's not just looking at access to insurance but also efforts to reduce exposure through smarter building decisions, mitigating actions, etc.
  • States, being independent of each other and not part of a federal regulatory system, are all experimenting, trying things, and sharing their experience with each other
  • As President-elect of the NAIC, Commissioner Mais sees the federated model of state regulation being a big contributor to the health and strength of the industry
• He leaves with the idea of Collaboration and working together as central to the future of the industry; an us vs. them mentality will not work
  • That means every party needs to come together – consumers, companies, regulators – and see how we can get to Yes on ideas that are of genuine benefit in helping people get protected

This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance Volume III. The Collaborators, part of the Future of Insurance thought leadership series (future-of-insurance.com) from Bryan Falchuk.

Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes.

Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.