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Law360 (March 24, 2021, 9:18 PM EDT) --
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| Scott Fischer |
Scott Fischer joined DLA's New York office as a partner on Wednesday. Before DLA Piper, he was with Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP for 2½ years and had served as the executive deputy superintendent for insurance in the New York State Department of Financial Services for 10 years until 2018.
"Scott is a highly respected former NYDFS regulator whose vast experience spans the full breadth of the global insurance sector," Michael P. Murphy, global co-chair of DLA Piper's insurance sector, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The former insurance chief has led hundreds of employees, supervising 1,700 insurers operating in New York with assets exceeding $4 trillion. Earlier in his career, Fischer ran the New York Liquidation Bureau, where he oversaw insolvent insurance companies being liquidated and taken over by the state.
On Wednesday, Fischer told Law360 that it was "primarily a financial decision" to leave the public sector in 2018, and that he came by the DLA position via a headhunter.
The former New York insurance commissioner said his senior regulatory experience will help DLA's insurance company clients to dissect a regulator's mindset to "get ahead of things" and "play by the rules," while managing to "maximize their profit and make money" at the same time.
The pandemic, its related risks and the rising COVID-19 business interruption coverage disputes have made carriers realize it is more important than ever to have clear and effective exclusions, and to consult lawyers with insurance regulation expertise, Fischer said.
"One of the things that I have really noticed in the last couple of years in private practice is the degree to which insurance departments generally, in New York DFS specifically, seem like real black boxes [to insurers]," he said.
The former insurance chief said sometimes regulators do not give enough explanation as to why they reject carriers' proposed insurance rate changes, their application to get a license or attempts to move into a new business line. He said his job at DLA is to offer insurance clients some clues into the regulators' decision-making processes.
"Being able to translate what they regulate, how the regulators think about things" and to give "that flavor and guidance about how to best interact with the regulator" is valuable to insurance companies, he said.
He said that the pandemic has also had an effect on regulators, who will be "looking at exclusions and how they're worded and addressed."
"In the U.S., we're probably going to see beefed up or more explicit exclusions for things in policies. And regulators are going to be asked to approve or disapprove these sorts of beefed up exclusions," Fischer said.
Fischer and his team will help carriers to think about the strategies to get exclusions approved and "how best to interact with the regulators when they get pushbacks."
The former insurance chief will lead the DLA insurance regulatory team in M&A, private equity and capital markets transactions, as well as the fast-evolving technology and insurtech space, according to PK Paran, global co-chair of DLA Piper's insurance sector.
On Wednesday, Fisher said he also believes that regulators will probe more into ensuring that artificial intelligence and big data deliver fair results for underserved racial groups as carriers push for speedier and automated insurance underwriting. Officials will also look into quicker transitions to electronic filing and distribution of insurance documents.
"There has been for a long time lots of resistance to doing things electronically. I think that's going to be opening up because of the need to have touchless and contactless relationships in light of COVID," he said.
Fischer said that he really liked DLA's "exciting and dynamic and extremely friendly group of people," and that he has been flooded by warm welcoming emails from colleagues.
"Everyone here seems to have a great sense of humor," he said.
--Editing by Regan Estes.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
