Manchin Leads Effort to Block ESG Agenda in State-Regulated Insurance

Washington, DC – Today, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) led a group of 38 Senators in expressing concerns to U.S. Department of the Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen over the Federal Insurance Office’s (FIO) recent efforts to force the Biden Administration’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) agenda onto the state-regulated insurance industry. The Senators stressed that insurance has been regulated at the state level for more than 150 years and this mandatory consideration of ESG factors would lead to higher compliance costs on insurers and higher premiums on Americans.

“Across the nation, insurers work day in and day out to provide reliable coverage to the public to ensure they are protected when adverse weather events strike or accidents occur. And, to be clear, it is in insurers’ best interest to take into account these various risks – whether it be weather risks or otherwise – that could affect their customers and integrity of their policies. Therefore, it is concerning that the Biden administration is ignoring steps insurers and state insurance regulators are already taking and instead utilizing the FIO to continue pushing ESG policies as part of its unrealistic environmental agenda,” the Senators wrote in part.

“Insurance is regulated at the state level and has been over 150 years,” the Senators continued. “It is vitally important that the FIO and the entire Biden administration understand that efforts strong arming insurers and state insurance regulators into potentially adopting certain ESG strategies, all in the name of climate-risk mitigation, would have real-world impacts. These impacts would come in the form of higher compliance costs on insurers and higher premiums on Americans, all while families and businesses across our nation continue to deal with a persistent inflation crisis.”

Senator Manchin’s recent efforts to block the Biden Administration’s ESG policies:

    On March 20th, 2023, Senator Manchin released a statement on President Biden’s veto of the bipartisan Congressional resolution to nullify the Administration’s ESG rule.

    On March 6th, 2023, Senator Manchin published an op-ed urging the Biden Administration to put the economic, energy and national security needs of the country above their radical ESG agenda.

    On March 1st, 2023, Senator Manchin voted for the bipartisan resolution to nullify the Biden Administration’s ESG rule and spoke on the Senate floor about the rule’s dangerous consequences.

    On February 1st, 2023, Senator Manchin led 50 Senators in introducing their challenge to the Biden Administration’s ESG rule.

The full letter is available below

Dear Secretary Yellen:

In March, the Senate passed H.J. Res. 30, a joint resolution disapproving of the Department of Labor’s “Prudence and Loyalty in Selecting Plan Investment and Exercising Shareholder Rights” rule. Unfortunately, President Biden vetoed this resolution.

Though this was disappointing, it was not surprising given the persistence of the Biden administration in adopting environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies as part of its effort to force its unrealistic environmental agenda onto the American public. And while there are countless examples of irresponsible and misguided efforts to adopt ESG through various federal rules, regulations, and guidance, we write today to highlight our concerns with recent climate-related actions taken by the Department of the Treasury’s Federal Insurance Office (FIO), including its proposed data climate call notice.

As you know, the FIO was created in 2010 by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (P.L. 111-203), and it is tasked with monitoring the insurance industry. In August 2021, the FIO published a request for information in which it sought public input on climate-related issues ranging from views on the FIO’s climate priorities, like assessing gaps in the supervision and regulation of insurers, to assessing how climate change could affect the insurance market. Furthermore, in October 2022, the FIO proposed an unworkable data collection effort to obtain certain insurance data that the FIO believes is necessary in determining what insurance coverage areas are most susceptible to climate-related risks.

Across the nation, insurers work day in and day out to provide reliable coverage to the public to ensure they are protected when adverse weather events strike or accidents occur. And, to be clear, it is in insurers’ best interest to take into account these various risks – whether it be weather risks or otherwise – that could affect their customers and integrity of their policies. Therefore, it is concerning that the Biden administration is ignoring steps insurers and state insurance regulators are already taking and instead utilizing the FIO to continue pushing ESG policies as part of its unrealistic environmental agenda.

Insurance is regulated at the state level and has been over 150 years. And though the FIO’s actions to date do not enact formal rules or regulations, they do place pressure on state insurance regulators and insurers themselves. We are concerned that this may ultimately result in state insurance regulators and insurers feeling coerced into adopting one-size-fits-all climate-risk mitigation policies rather than building on existing efforts to mitigate risks and manage policyholders’ exposure to changing weather patterns as deemed appropriate by the insurers and state insurance regulators on the ground, which has served the industry and public well.

State insurance regulators and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) have long focused on requiring insurers to examine exposures to financial risks, including climate and weather risks. Additionally, the NAIC has several tools at its disposal, such as the NAIC Climate and Resiliency Task (EX) Force, the Climate Risk and Resiliency Resource Center, as well as an Insurer Climate Risk Disclosure Survey, which was adopted in 2010, and has been updated as recently as April 2022 to capture additional information.

We are not in any way writing to suggest that insurers and their state insurance regulators should not be conscientious of changing weather patterns and the industry’s exposure to such. However, it is vitally important that the FIO and the entire Biden administration understand that efforts strong arming insurers and state insurance regulators into potentially adopting certain ESG strategies, all in the name of climate-risk mitigation, would have real-world impacts. These impacts would come in the form of higher compliance costs on insurers and higher premiums on Americans, all while families and businesses across our nation continue to deal with a persistent inflation crisis.

As you continue your work, it is of utmost importance that the FIO resist pressures to insert ESG policies into the heart of its work and pressure insurers and state insurance regulators into adopting tenets of the Biden administration’s unrealistic environmental agenda. Instead, we hope that the FIO will recognize that insurers and state insurance regulators are best positioned to make determinations about what risk mitigation strategies (environmental or otherwise) to implement, as they have responsibly done up to this point.

Thank you for your attention to our concerns, and we hope that you will be receptive.