PHILADELPHIA —Insurance trade associations urged the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to merge their efforts to collect terrorism data with federal officials.

All states and the District of Columbia participate in a NAIC data call to collect information related to terrorism risk insurance to serve regulatory objectives such as monitoring the affordability and availability of insurance coverage for acts of terrorism and assessing insurers' financial exposure to terrorism risk. Separately, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Federal Insurance Office requires insurers that participate in the TRIA program to also submit data.

The NAIC is coordinating with the FIO on terrorism data collection efforts, Brooke Stringer, financial policy and legislative advisor for the NAIC in Washington, said during the NAIC summer meeting in Philadelphia on Monday.

But the change in administrations has created an opportunity to closely coordinate with the FIO and eventually merge these efforts to reduce the burden on insurers, according to representatives from insurance trade associations.

“There really just isn’t any good public policy reason for there to be two competing federal and state data calls going on,” said Robert Woody, senior counsel for policy for the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America in Washington. “We’ve had discussions with FIO and they have indicated to us that the Treasury Department was probably the largest impediment last year to the states and federal government working together. But since that time, of course, there has been a leadership change at the Treasury Department. There’s been a leadership change at FIO. We certainly have the impression that there is a different attitude now and a new willingness to reach out to the states and to see what can be done to try to work more closely together.”

Michael O'Malley, senior vice president for public policy for the American Insurance Association in Washington, urged the NAIC to “go beyond coordinating, but to truly converge the two data calls. We’ve similarly had conversations with FIO where they’ve indicated a willingness to work with the NAIC and we really see such changes as a win, win, win. NAIC gets to collect the data, FIO gets what they need from these critical reports and companies get to do one data call. The goal has to be convergence, not just coordination.”

Martha Lees, chair of the NAIC’s terrorism insurance implementation working group and general counsel for the New York State Insurance Department, said one data call would be the “ultimate goal,” but that the organizations are not there yet and will continue to do their best to alleviate the burden of two separate data calls as much as possible in the meantime.