A Bay Space consumer-advocacy group claims California’s Division of Insurance coverage is violating state public-records legislation by refusing handy over essential knowledge on shopper complaints about life insurance coverage.
The Nice Hill-based non-profit Life Insurance coverage Client Advocacy Middle known as the division’s purported violation of the California Public Data Act “inexcusable.”
The division didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
Numbers and kinds of shopper complaints about life insurance coverage and annuities, plus the stories and knowledge the division used for the complaints part of its 2023 annual report, would assist the non-profit promote the pursuits of life insurance coverage clients, and supply key info to determine a baseline on shopper complaints.
“Why is (the department) trying to hide this information?” stated the group’s govt director Brian Brosnahan.
Of explicit curiosity to the group is assessing customers’ responses after passage this 12 months of California Senate Invoice 263, which imposes necessities for brokers promoting life insurance coverage, together with that they not put their very own curiosity forward of a buyer’s. The group alleges that the the invoice, now legislation, lets brokers “falsely tell” a shopper they don’t have conflicts of curiosity with the buyer, even when they stand to make substantial commissions if the shopper follows their steerage.
The Division of Insurance coverage’s alleged stonewalling has gone on for months, the group stated in a information launch Tuesday. An preliminary request in August drew a response from the division that it didn’t have the data, in response to the group, which responded by declaring that the division’s annual report contained charts displaying whole complaints and the highest 10 criticism matters. The division “obviously did possess the requested information,” the group claimed.
One other back-and-forth adopted, with the division saying the requested knowledge was “not maintained by the Department,” the group stated.
“This statement is obviously false since (the department) necessarily maintains the underlying data and reports from which the charts in the Annual Report were generated,” the group claimed.
In October, the division “finally admitted that it possessed the requested data,” the group stated, however now’s refusing to supply it, saying it’s confidential, the group stated.
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