PartnerRe chief executive officer Patrick Thiele yesterday joined other industry leaders in calling for changes to the complex US system of insurance regulation.

All 50 US states have their own regulations, which has long been a source of red, tape, expense and frustration for the world-wide reinsurance industry.

"There is need to have some kind of coherent regulation that recognises the global nature of this industry," Mr. Thiele said at the Standard & Poor's Insurance Conference in New York, as reported on The National Underwriter web-site.

And he added that "it's incumbent on reinsurance companies to find ways to be more transparent" so they can assure all the regulatory bodies throughout the world that "we know what we're doing in terms of risk assumption, that we're transparent about where the risks lie on the balance sheet".

Mr. Thiele was among three CEOs being asked how proposed changes being reviewed by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to modify the 100 percent collateral rule for alien reinsurers would impact their companies.

The proposed rule would replace the current collateral requirement with charges based on standards administered by a new Reinsurance Evaluation Office.

Nikolaus von Bomhard, chief executive officer of Munich Re, said: "We think, at Munich Re, that we should solve the problem on a higher level," explaining that the optional federal charter idea for insurers that has been periodically introduced in the US Senate "is the path we should take".

Mr. von Bomhard said giving insurers the option to elect federal regulation would be a first step toward introducing global "mutual recognition" regulatory standards and a "leading supervisor concept" from one country for global insurers or reinsurers.

It may be a smarter route to solve many more problems beyond the fairness of collateral requirements to get an optional federal charter, he said, predicting that it would be more likely to achieve this in the reinsurance industry in the US than in the primary insurance industry.

"Reinsurance could be like a Trojan horse<\m>a test case for getting that," he said.

Joseph Brandon, CEO of General Re Corp., said he is "supportive of comprehensive reform of the way reinsurers are regulated".

"I think it would be a mistake to pick out one element of current regulation and spend a lot of effort on what is both an economic and emotional issue in the industry," he said, referring to the collateral requirement.

"I think we should attack the real problem, which is that reinsurance is a global industry today being regulated by 50 states in the United States," he said, calling this a "fundamental mismatch".

"This is not a plea for less regulation but an increase in the effectiveness of regulation that's out there," said Mr. Brandon.

Mr. Brandon said he's more optimistic about the prospect of getting comprehensive reform than changing individual components of the way reinsurance is regulated.

Addressing the broader question of whether an optional federal charter is in the cards for the entire industry, not just reinsurers, Wall Street analysts at an earlier session suggested that prospects are dim.

Matthew Heimermann, vice-president of J.P. Morgan, said: "I don't think I'll see it in my lifetime," adding that reforming regulation for the whole industry at once is preferable to a piecemeal approach, like the one that is currently moving toward reforms for surplus lines and reinsurance first.

Seventy-seven percent of conference attendees polled by S&P say they favour an optional federal charter. Attendees included insurance executives and industry analysts.