Securing an extension of the federal terrorism insurance backstop created by the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002 tops the agenda for the Property and Casualty Insurers Association of America, but it’s far from the organization’s sole concern.

The insurer trade group has considerably more on its plate, including regulatory issues and unforeseen aspects of emerging ride-sharing businesses, PCI President David Sampson said.

“The most important priority for the remainder of 2014 is to secure the reauthorization of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, which expires Dec. 31,” he said. “That has been our top federal legislative priority for this year.”

“I don’t think anyone believes that it is in the best interests of the nation or the economy, at a time of significantly heightened international terrorist threats upon the homeland, that this program expire,” Mr. Sampson said.

He seemed optimistic that a resolution could be reached.

“There’s been a lot of progress throughout the course of the year,” he said, noting that the Senate had approved reauthorization by a 94-3 vote and that the House Financial Services Committee passed a version of the bill this summer.

“Every indication we have had from our extensive and ongoing visits with key leaders on the Hill is that everyone recognizes this is a ‘must do’ piece of legislation,” Mr. Sampson said.

He pointed to the nearly unanimous nature of the Senate vote. “It’s pretty miraculous when you consider the gridlock and hyper-partisanship in Washington that you could have an overwhelmingly bipartisan support for reauthorization of this federal backstop,” he said.

The question now is the “end game,” Mr. Sampson said. “That will be our top priority as we look forward to Congress coming back for the lame-duck session after the (November) election.”

Also on the PCI agenda of critical priorities is “the continuing global regulatory convergence that would seek to impose one-size-fits-all bank-centric capital and regulatory standards on the insurance industry,” he said.

“This is an issue that has continued to grow over the past year,” Mr. Sampson said, as international regulatory bodies “are becoming more and more opaque and less open in terms of the process by which they make these decisions.”

Along the same lines, the organization will continue trying to pare similar efforts made by the Collins Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

“There’s been a lot of progress this year on a fix to the Collins Amendment, which imposed bank-centric-type capital standards on insurers as part of the Dodd-Frank Act,” Mr. Sampson said.

The emergence of insurance issues related to the evolving U.S. economy, including services such as ride-share startup Uber, also have landed on PCI’s plate.

These issues “kind of exploded onto the scene this year” after a tragic fatal accident involving an Uber driver and a young girl in San Francisco on New Year’s Eve 2013, he said.

“We have expended very serious effort on that set of issues this year with some very significant developments,” Mr. Sampson said, referring to the passage of a California law that seeks to establish insurance requirements for such ride-share companies.

“We hope the California law will become a model law for other states,” he said.