Earlier today, President Bush signed into law the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007 (“TRIPRA”), which provides a seven-year extension of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program, originally created in the wake of September 11 by Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002 (“TRIA”) and extended by the Terrorism Risk Insurance Extension Act of 2005 (“TRIEA”). TRIEA was due to expire at year’s end and both houses of Congress recently approved of the text of TRIPRA.
As we have reported in recent posts on InsureReinsure.com, the road to this extension has been eventful over the last few months. Most recently, the House of Representatives approved, by a 360-53 vote, of TRIPRA but this was after weeks of debate in the House and Senate over the terms of TRIA extension legislation. In agreeing to the terms of TRIPRA, the House acquiesced to narrower terms, favored by the Senate and the Bush Administration than those proposed in a prior House version.
TRIPRA will result in a few modifications of the current Terrorism Risk Insurance Program. It expands coverage to include domestic attacks, but does not add coverage for group life insurance.
Earlier versions of the extension legislation passed by the House would have (i) extended the program for 15, rather than 7 years; (ii) lowered the threshold for triggering aid under the program from $100 million to $50 million; (iii) required insurers to offer coverage for nuclear, biological, chemical and radiological attacks; and (iv) expanded the Program’s scope to include group life coverage, but TRIPRA does none of these. As we discussed here, the President had expressed his intention to veto any legislation containing such terms, prompting the Senate to pass the narrower extension legislation and the House to follow suit.
