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Senate Bill 1291 |
Senate Author: Hegar |
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Effective: 9-1-11 |
House Sponsor: Taylor, Larry |
Senate Bill 1291 amends the Insurance Code to require the senior associate commissioner of the Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) program through which TDI regulates the financial and operating conditions of, and issues licenses to, domestic and foreign insurers and other entities regulated by TDI to submit to the commissioner of insurance an annual budget of examination costs. The bill specifies that only the commissioner is authorized to adopt and approve such a budget, and it requires the commissioner to approve the budget by a certain date. The bill prohibits the financial program from directly or indirectly causing the TDI operating account to incur any examination costs and authorizes TDI to set the amounts of fees as necessary to carry out the functions of the financial examinations and actuarial divisions relating to the examination of insurers and other regulated entities and to fund the budget of examination costs.
Previous law required an assessment or fee collected under provisions governing examination expenses to be deposited to the credit of the TDI operating account. Senate Bill 1291 instead requires an assessment or fee related to the examination of insurers and other regulated entities to be deposited to the credit of an account with the Texas Treasury Safekeeping Trust Company to be used exclusively to pay examination costs and requires other revenue to be deposited to the credit of the TDI operating account.