A new generation: North Dakota's 34-year-old insurance commissioner speaks out on industry issues, including the industry's treatment of active soldiers.

James Poolman, 34, is the youngest member of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. And as the association's vice president, he stands poised to become the group's youngest-ever leader should he ascend to the presidency at the association's December meeting,

In a talk with Best's Review at the NAIC's Summer National Meeting in San Francisco, the North Dakota insurance commissioner discussed the success of the association's electronic form filing system and his efforts in his home state to protect military personnel from abusive underwriting practices.

Q: Were you satisfied with the final draft of the regulatory modernization "road map" NAIC submitted in June to the House Financial Services Committee?

It's a consensus document. I think, if you talk to every individual commissioner, they might have a different opinion about what should be included and what shouldn't. But as a consensus document, it's part of an evolutionary process that allows us to stay in the game.

Q: Do you, as someone who may be leading the NAIC someday, feel there should be a role for federal oversight of the industry in one form or another?

I think there would be large consensus that we are modernizing our system ourselves and that there is not a need for federal regulation. But, that being said, it there is going to be a bill, and Oxley has said that there will be, we want to put our best foot forward and do it right.

Q: In your home state of North Dakota, one of the issues you've been dealing with is insurance coverage for soldiers who have been serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it's been a concern of yours that they axe treated fairly. What has the industry response been to your efforts, and what do you think are reasonable requirements for insurers who are confronted with these issues?

The industry has responded very well. There have been other states that have followed our lead in this, and we think that it has made a tremendous difference. I don't necessarily know what is reasonable to require, but I can tell you what's not reasonable. A guardsman has a vehicle in storage, cancels the insurance on the vehicle, and comes back and is punished by being underwritten like someone who went without coverage. And that is just simply unacceptable to me.

It's interesting. We have gotten feedback from all over the country when that hit the press, in USA Today and so forth, and we have heard from military personnel all over the country who have been mistreated by their insurers. That's why you've seen other states follow this.

Q: Are there any companies you would point to as having taken a leadership role in doing what you'd consider the "right thing" on this issue?

When we sent out the bulletin--which we did electronically, because we're trying to get away from killing trees--there's a lot of them that are doing the right thing. And many of them responded, saying they are already doing this and they were giving specific instructions to underwriters and to agents to check for this, which is great.

Q: Generally, do you think persistency of coverage is a reasonable underwriting criteria?

It can be a legitimate underwriting tool, but not in this case. There are just some cases where there are extenuating circumstances, and this is one of them.

Q: One of your duties within the NAIC is promotion of the System for Electronic Rate and Form Filing, which reported that filings had doubled to nearly 50,000 through the first five months of the year compared with 2003. What's been behind that success?

Well, what it shows is that the system is working. That the NAIC is committed to continue to make investments within the system to make sure the technology continues to advance, so that both the state users of the system and the industry users of the system have access to cutting-edge technology.

Q: How many states are currently a part of SERFF?

There's 17 within what is called the Uniform Product Coding Matrix, with four more that are already in the process of implementing it, and we've gotten requests from a number of others who say they plan to implement it.

Q: As part of the Tri-National Working Group, dealing with issues of NAFTA implementation, (Texas) Commissioner Jose Montemayor invited Mexican and Canadian insurers to register in his state under a surplus lines vehicle. As commissioner of a border state yourself, is that something that you would also consider doing?

Absolutely. If you travel our interstates, there's a lot of Canadian license plates on commercial vehicles. So, our issues are very similar in that regard, and we can certainly do that.