AIA lauds Tentative-Signature Agreement
the agreement.
In a letter to all conference committee members, Robert E. Vagley, AIA president, wrote, "We believe the current version of S. 761 will effectively eliminate the legal uncertainties associated with an electronic signature or record ... The current draft, if enacted, will allow insurance companies and its customers to more fully utilize electronic commerce. It will further wed the insurance and electronic commerce industries in a way that will offer our customers more convenience, efficiency and competitive value."
The AIA, which has been lobbying Members of Congress on e-signature legislation since the beginning of 1999, is particularly supportive of those elements of the agreement that will benefit insurance customers and companies, including:
* The inclusion of language ensuring the bill's application to
the business of insurance, which is necessitated by the McCarran-Ferguson
Act;
* The inclusion of electronic records in the bill, which is
vital to the paper-intensive insurance technology;
* Technology-neutral provisions that will allo
business-to-business and personal consumer-to-business transactions to
utilize the technology of their choosing and not specified technologies;
* The elimination of certain exclusions to the bill that would
have severely curtailed a customer's option to purchase and maintain
insurance on-line.
The agreement would provide, in most cases, electronic signatures and records with the same legal validity that paper signatures and records have today. It would establish a set of standards that are consistent with the model Uniform Electronic Transactions Act and would apply those standards only in states that have not yet passed the UETA model. Once state passed UETA, it would preempt the federal legislation.
"This agreement will help facilitate more online transactions< between insurance companies and its customers," John Savercool, vice president of federal affairs at AIA, said. "It is a major step forward in bringing the insurance world more online."
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The American Insurance Association is a trade association representing more than 370 major insurance companies which provide all lines of property and casualty insurance. AIA's headquarters is located in Washington, D.C. and the association has representatives in every state. All AIA press releases are available at www.aiadc.org.