Who speaks for the consumer?

Abstract

In 2002 and 2003, I was selected as a funded consumer representative and a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). This abstract describes the experience and what it means to empower consumers. Although the example given is from the US, the principles are applicable to other countries.NAIC is the association of the chief insurance regulators of the 50 states, four territories, and the District of Columbia. As a consumer representative I attend four national meetings each year to speak up on behalf of the fair and equitable treatment of consumers. The purpose of NAIC is to improve state insurance regulation by facilitating a degree of uniformity of regulation among the states (Cude, 1997). To ensure that consumers were heard, NAIC created its Consumer Participation Program in 1992 (Cude, 1995).At a typical meeting, there are about 500 regulators, 1000 industry representatives, and 13 consumer representatives. Five of the 13 are selected to serve on the Board. The consumer representatives include professors, lawyers, economists, and community activists. Being so few in number, the question arises: How effective can we be? The fundamental responsibility is to represent consumers’ viewpoints, to give authority to or to voice their perspective that is the definition of empowerment. This quite literally means going to the microphones at NAIC meetings, but it also means working behind the scenes drafting policy and model laws.According to A. Coskun Samli (2001), empowering the consumer will benefit society as a whole. It will expand the economy. Serving as a consumer representative is indeed a worthwhile challenge, a chance to change things for the better.