CLO market participants weigh in on NAIC proposal as lawyer dissects ACLI comment

Last week Creditflux covered the ACLI’s comment letter to the NAIC. Although this letter expressed broad agreement with the NAIC’s proposal (with several caveats), Mayer Brown partner Paul Forrester says apparent consent needs to be contextualised.

“The deferential tone of the comment letters should be understood as the regulated talking to the regulator,” he says. “Particularly for ACLI, which must work with the NAIC across a number of committees, task forces and working groups, there is a natural reticence to be blunt and sometimes even direct. As the ACLI demonstrates, it is currently working with both the RBC Investment Risk and Evaluation working group, and the Valuation of Securities Task Force and cannot step in between them, but has to gently persuade them to better connect and collaborate more than they seem to doing.”

With this in mind, he says the ACLI’s letter pushed the envelope in challenging the NAIC proposals about as far as it could.