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Pennsylvania court orders long-term care insurer into rehabilitation, District of Columbia and Tennessee name new insurance department heads.

Long-Term-Care Insurance: A Pennsylvania court has approved the state insurance commissioner's request to place long-term care insurer Senior Health Insurance Co. of Pennsylvania in rehabilitation.

Commonwealth Court granted the petition filed by Insurance Commissioner Jessica Altman, which painted the company's financial position as “dire.”

Based on actuarial projections of the long-tail claim exposures, SHIP's liabilities, plus its authorized and issued capital stock, exceeded its admitted assets by more than $474 million as of Dec. 31, 2018, it said.

SHIP, which was established to run off a closed block of long-term care insurance previously indirectly owned and administered by Conseco Inc., has about 51,000 policyholders and $2.2 billion in assets, the petition said. It has not written any new insurance business since at least 2003, it said.

The trustees who run SHIP said it may be possible to devise a plan for its rehabilitation that would produce for policyholders a result no less beneficial than would be produced by a liquidation, but success is not assured because of the gravity of its financial situation, the petition said.

SHIP's risk-based capital report triggered a mandatory control level event, and SHIP's trustees have consented to the rehabilitation, it said.

Insurance Commissioner: District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser has appointed Karima Woods as the acting commissioner of the Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking.

She succeeds Stephen Taylor, who had been commissioner since June 2015, according to his biography.

Woods has served as the director of business development and strategy in the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development since 2015, Bowser said in a statement.

There, she provided strategic leadership, stakeholder engagement and global outreach to the business community, it said.

Before that, Woods served as deputy director of business development, international business manager and senior business development specialist—roles in which she helped shape signature business development initiatives and establish new business relationships with international markets such as China, Qatar, Dubai, Canada, Cuba, and El Salvador, the statement said.

Tennessee Insurance Director: Bill Huddleston, most recently the Tennessee Insurance Division's director of receiverships, has been named director of the division.

Huddleston has served in the department since 2014 and has previous experience in banking and public accounting, according to a statement from the division.

He received a Governor's Excellence in Service Award in 2017, the insurance division said.

The division is one of eight under the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, which is headed by Hodgen Mainda.



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