Insurance Commissioner Thomas B. Leonardi has been named to a federal panel that will advise the new office established to monitor the insurance industry as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Leonardi, a venture capitalist who worked with the insurance industry before being named insurance commissioner earlier this year, will be one of 15 members of the Federal Advisory Committee on Insurance. The office it will advise, the Federal Insurance Office, is part of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and monitors the insurance industry.

The office’s responsibilities include assessing the availability and affordability of insurance to underserved populations, advising the treasury secretary on domestic insurance policy issues, and developing federal policy on international insurance regulatory matters. It is also charged with identifying issues that could contribute to systemic risk in the industry or in the nation’s financial system, according to the treasury department.

The committee also includes the insurance commissioners of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Montana, Oregon, and the District of Columbia.

Arielle Levin Becker covered health care for The Connecticut Mirror. She previously worked for The Hartford Courant, most recently as its health reporter, and has also covered small towns, courts and education in Connecticut and New Jersey. She was a finalist in 2009 for the prestigious Livingston Award for Young Journalists, a recipient of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship and the third-place winner in 2013 for an in-depth piece on caregivers from the National Association of Health Journalists. She is a 2004 graduate of Yale University.

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