10 while the Senate was unable to negotiate a compromise before the session ended. In
the following year, 1999, both the House and Senate reached an agreement and passed
the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The passage of GLB allows the creation of financial
holding companies to underwrite and sell both insurance and securities, to engage in
commercial and merchant banking, and to develop real estate through subsidiaries. It
also expedited the review of conflicts between state and federal regulators regarding
insurance issues. State governments, however, remain as the functional regulators of
insurance activities.
As expected, the passage of GLB led to a significant impact on many insurers’
practices and thereby affected the market landscape of the insurance industry. There
are many Sections within the GLB. This research focuses on the Sections 302 and
303 as shown in Table 2.1. With observations of U.S. insurance companies’ major
activities such as significant market expanding, merger, or bankruptcy, we are mainly
interested in studying whether the GLB Act carries crucial effects to the survival of
insurance firms.
Table 2.1: Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (1999): TITLE III - INSURANCE
Subtitle A - State Regulation of Insurance
Sec. 302. Insurance underwriting in national banks.
Sec. 303. Title insurance activities of national banks and their affiliates.