PCI Offers Insurance Scoring Resources

From the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (“PCI”)

As states continue to consider restrictions or bans on credit-based insurance scoring, and as the National Association of Insurance Commissioners has announced it plans to revisit the issue, we wanted to highlight a few of the resources that PCI has been using to combat misinformation and fight restrictive proposals. PCI has been providing the in-depth resources and data that lawmakers need to truly understand how insurance scoring works and how it benefits consumers.

In February, we distributed the attached white paper, The Predictive Value of Credit-based Insurance Scores, to provide data that proves the value of insurers’ use of credit information and to help clarify the practice. We’re also using high-level fact sheets to educate media and lawmakers and draw attention to our key messages on the issue.

Alex Hageli, PCI’s personal lines manager and subject matter expert on insurance scoring, has testified on the issue in Iowa, Nebraska and North Dakota (with a close call in Indiana, where just prior to his testimony a ban bill was positively amended in committee to eliminate the mandatory three year rescoring requirement). Hageli is also scheduled to testify this week on a credit prohibition bill in Minnesota. Other PCI representatives have testified against ban bills in Connecticut, Maryland, Montana and New Hampshire. Thus far this year, not a single ban bill has passed in any state.    

PCI has also reached out to various national and local media outlets to discuss the effects of the economic crisis on this issue and to explain that the assumption that credit scores decrease during times of economic hardship is simply not the reality. The information we provided to the Wall Street Journal was incorporated in the attached blog post.

We encourage members to visit PCI’s Media Center on our website at www.pciaa.net, where we are continually updating our insurance scoring page with the latest developments.

Sincerely,

Paul C. Blume, Jr.                                               
Senior Vice President-State Government Relations  

Ann Weber
Vice President, Regional Manager and Counsel