Following intense opposition by the insurance industry, the American Insurance Association (AIA) reported that the California Assembly Insurance Committee defeated legislation that would have disclosed insurers’ geographic sales and marketing results to the public. The bill failed passage on a vote of 1 to 6.
William Gausewitz, AIA assistant vice president, western region, stated that this bill would have given insurers key insights into their competitors’ sales and marketing strategies and would have required companies to publicly share proprietary information. He added that this would have forced insurers to violate antitrust laws.
SB 834, sponsored by Senator Martha Escutia (D-Whittier), would have required each insurer selling homeowners insurance, commercial insurance or fire policies in California to annually submit their sales and loss results in each zip code in the state. Under this bill, the California Department of Insurance (CDI) would have analyzed these data and made them available to the public. SB 834 would also have created civil penalties up to $50,000 for companies that did not adequately supply the data and $250,000 for companies that willfully refused to comply with CDI’s data call.
Gausewitz noted that current law already prohibits insurers from discriminating based on age, race, gender and geographic location. Therefore, rather than helping consumers or preventing discrimination the legislation would have provided companies with a means to undercut competitors.
Topics Data Driven California Legislation
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