PCI May Use Illegal Action

Revised: 09/22/2006

PCI May Use Legal Action To Fight Credit-Score Study

By Michael Ha, NU Online News Service, July 1, 2004 - A national insurers' trade group threatened to sue regulators to block a multi-state study of the carriers' use of credit background to rate customers.

The group Property Casualty Insurers Association of America expressed its willingness to take legal steps, if needed, to stop the data calls regulators are sending out to insurers to gather information for this study.

In its announcement at a morning conference call, PCI did not say when it might go to court, but it noted that the time for dialogues with regulators may run out soon, since the closing date for insurers to turn in their data is next month.

The deadline for participating states to turn in the data to the Missouri Insurance Department, which is spearheading the multi-state effort, is Aug. 20. The states currently participating in the study are: Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

“We will say this: As time goes on and the deadlines for the data calls get closer, we will have to further analyze all of our options, including a potential legal action,” commented Robert Zeman, senior vice president for the Des Plaines, Ill-based PCI.

In today's conference call, PCI representatives also answered recent criticism over their attack on the study made by the consumer advocacy group, Center for Economic Justice, Austin, Texas.

This week, the Center's executive director, Birny Birnbaum, offered a written statement blistering PCI and the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies in Indianapolis for the way the groups have been portraying the credit-scoring study's data call as potentially illegal.

“We know that insurers' use of credit scoring will come to an end when we see the insurance industry resort to such desperate tactics to defend their use of credit scoring,” Mr. Birnbaum stated.

He added, “If you can't win on the merits, then you demonize the other side, misinform the debate and contradict yourself every time you say something. The industry can't win the credit-scoring debate on the merits, so it must resort to these other tactics.”

But PCI maintains that its concerns are legitimate. According to PCI, most state regulators participating in the credit-scoring study are sending data calls to insurers under their market-conduct examination law and such action falls outside insurance departments' legal authority.

The PCI and NAMIC letter sent last month to regulators involved in the credit-scoring study, argued that market-conduct examination law should only be used to determine compliance with existing laws, not for developing new laws or for public-policy research.

“We have major concerns about the data call from a legal as well as a public policy perspective,” PCI's Mr. Zeman said today. “As we view the data call, it's not being necessarily conducted with a view toward gauging compliance with existing laws,” he continued. “Its use of the examination authority is a bit of fishing expedition, frankly, for a broader study which is really not authorized as we see it.

“This issue has been well settled by state legislatures, and there are some commissioners who are perhaps less willing to accept the result from state legislatures,” Mr. Zeman said.

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