Washington Fined Insurers More Than $400,000 in 2009

Washington state insurance commissioner Mike Kreidler issued more than $400,000 in fines in 2009, as well as revoking the licenses of several insurance agents, the Office of the Insurance Commissioner announced.

Kreidler’s office collected a total of $407,600 in fines in 2009. That’s considerably lower than the previous year, when the state fined insurers more than $1.2 million, the OIC said.

“Hopefully, it’s a sign that companies are getting better at following the rules,” said Kreidler. “The whole point of fines is to ensure that the consumer protections in state law are followed.”

Fines collected by the state insurance commissioner’s office do not go to the agency. The money is deposited in the state’s general fund to pay for other state services.

The enforcement orders are posted on the Office of the Insurance Commissioner website at http://www.insurance.wa.gov/orders/enforcement.asp. Among the major enforcement actions:

• Farmers Insurance Co. of Washington was fined $40,000 for issuing policies that weren’t in accordance with the documents they’d filed with the state.
• Nationwide Life Insurance Co. of Minneapolis, Minn. was fined $20,000 for issuing insurance documents that had not been filed with the state, among other violations.
• Kawasaki Motors Corp. of Wilmington, Del. was fined $20,000 for selling service contracts before they had been registered in Washington.

Source: OIC