For those of you in the insurance industry, you do usually provide a valuable service. I carry multiple policies, in fact I’m even thinking about adding an umbrella soon. Peace-of-mind is invaluable, however, my faith in your industry has been shaken by some of your industry practices.
The insurance industry has a black-eye from their responses to Katrina, cedar fire, and other large scale disasters. The industry has been able to reap record profits by systematically limiting payouts. Some of these practices are of questionable legality in many states and are at a minimum unethical.
The 2007 San Diego fire is a great opportunity to improve your industry’s reputation. I hope you rise to the occasion. Please do the right thing.
Here’s a cut and paste from the Bloomberg article we referred to. I’m a regular reader of Bloomberg, and I find its business reporting very thorough. I came across this article a couple months back and remember how disturbed and pissed I was after reading it.
Home Insurers’ Secret Tactics Cheat Fire Victims, Hike Profits
By David Dietz and Darrell Preston
Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) — Julie Tunnell remembers standing in her debris-strewn driveway when the tall man in blue jeans approached. Her northern San Diego tudor-style home had been incinerated a week earlier in the largest wildfire in California history. The blaze in October and November 2003 swept across an area 19 times the size of Manhattan, destroying 2,232 homes and killing 15 people.
Now came another blow. A representative of State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., the largest home insurer in the U.S., came to the charred remnants of Tunnell’s home to tell her the company would pay just $220,000 of the estimated $306,000 cost of rebuilding the house.
“It was devastating; I stood there and cried,” says Tunnell, 42, who teaches accounting at San Diego City College. “I felt absolutely abandoned.”
Tunnell joined thousands of people in the U.S. who already knew a secret about the insurance industry: When there’s a disaster, the companies homeowners count on to protect them from financial ruin routinely pay less than what policies promise.
Insurers often pay 30-60 percent of the cost of rebuilding a damaged home — even when carriers assure homeowners they’re fully covered, thousands of complaints with state insurance departments and civil court cases show.
Paying out less to victims of catastrophes has helped produce record profits. In the past 12 years, insurance company net income has soared — even in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.
Highest-Ever Profits
Property-casualty insurers, which cover damage to homes and cars, reported their highest-ever profit of $73 billion last year, up 49 percent from $49 billion in 2005, according to Highline Data LLC, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based firm that compiles insurance industry data.
The 60 million U.S. homeowners who pay more than $50 billion a year in insurance premiums are often disappointed when they discover insurers won’t pay the full cost of rebuilding their damaged or destroyed homes.
Property insurers systematically deny and reduce their policyholders’ claims, according to court records in California, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, New Hampshire and Tennessee.
The insurance companies routinely refuse to pay market prices for homes and replacement contents, they use computer programs to cut payouts, they change policy coverage with no clear explanation, they ignore or alter engineering reports, and they sometimes ask their adjusters to lie to customers, court records and interviews with former employees and state regulators show.
`It’s Despicable’
As Mississippi Republican U.S. Senator Trent Lott and thousands of other homeowners have found, insurers make low offers — or refuse to pay at all — and then dare people to fight back.
“It’s despicable not to make good-faith offers to everybody,” says Robert Hunter, who was Texas insurance commissioner from 1993 to 1995 and is now insurance director at the Washington-based Consumer Federation of America.
“Money managers have taken over this whole industry,” Hunter says. “Their eyes are not on people who are hurt but on the bottom line for the next quarter.”
The industry’s drive for profit has overwhelmed its obligation to policyholders, says California Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, a Democrat. As California’s insurance commissioner from 2002 to 2006, Garamendi imposed $18.4 million in fines against carriers for mistreating customers.
“There’s a fundamental economic conflict between the customer and the company,” he says. “That is, the company doesn’t want to pay. The first commandment of insurance is, `Thou shalt pay as little and as late as possible.”’
