Mark him present: after 30 years of meetings, response vice president is the unofficial NAIC historian.

It's like clockwork. Four times a year, almost every year, August Alegi packs a suitcase and heads out to attend the quarterly meetings of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Few have been going as long as he has--more than three decades. After joining the insurance industry in 1968, Alegi began attending the meetings during the spring of 1972 when the organization held only two national meetings--in December and June--and zone meetings in smaller cities. Some time after that, the meeting structure was changed, and he began attending the four national meetings the group currently holds each year.

Although he doesn't know the exact number of meetings he has attended, it could surpass 100--a number that certainly puts him in a small group of people, if not a category of his own.

As a result, he has become a sage when it comes to the NAIC. "I get asked for advice a lot," he said, particularly by trade associations such as the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America. He has become the unofficial historian when it comes to putting NAIC regulations and language into historical context. As vice president, general counsel and secretary of Response Insurance Co., a Meriden, Conn.-based private-passenger automobile insurer, Alegi has to stay on top of government and regulatory affairs.

More recently, the NAIC meetings have become more important to his company's day-to-day business. Thirty years ago, the meetings were more of a "meet-and-greet" conference for Alegi. Because it took about four or five years for the organization to pass model rules or laws, he used the time to meet in person with business associates and talk with people he typically had trouble getting on the phone.

But a shift came when NAIC began granting accreditation to states. To receive accreditation, states had to pass certain model laws, something they had been ignoring. "Since states started actually enacting these model laws, [NAIC] suddenly became more important, and companies pay a lot of attention to it," Alegi said. To date, there are more than 20 model laws in effect, he said.

Alegi also closely watches NAIC model rules, which have a significant effect on companies. For instance, he is in tune with how things will play out with a possible revision of the NAIC's model audit rule, which would require insurance companies to comply with some provisions of the federal Sarbanes-Oxley Act, regardless of whether they're publicly traded. It's something Alegi said would cost companies hundreds of thousands of dollars in auditing fees.

He's also focused on the possibility that the insurance industry may wind up under some type of federal oversight. During the spring NAIC meeting, Rep. Mike Oxley, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, gave state insurance regulators the outlines of likely legislation to increase the federal role in overseeing the industry. The last time NMC was being threatened by federal regulation was when Rep. John Dingell, a Democrat, led the fight, Alegi said. As a result of pressure from Dingell during the 1980s and 1990s, the NAIC strengthened solvency regulation.

This time, the push is to modernize the NAIC." Right now, a lot of this is driven by life companies who say that if they take a product to market it takes two years," Alegi said. Even property/casualty companies such as Response become frustrated over the work and time required to do something as simple as changing a company name. When Response bought an insurance company last year, it filed for a name change. But it's been almost a year, and the process isn't finished yet, he said. "Putting silly and unproductive restraints on [companies] doesn't help anybody," Alegi said. "How does that help consumers?"