On May 15 the First District Court of Appeal issued an opinion affirming the suspension of Allstate from selling new business in the state. Allstate had file a motion for rehearing of the original order in January. Recently, Florida Insurance Commissioner, Kevin McCarty, ordered that Allstate is now permitted to sell new business in the state.
Allstate’s privileges to sell policies were reinstated because Allstate submitted an affidavit certifying that it did provide documents the Office of Insurance Regulation ordered produced to look into Allstate’s business practices in Florida. The issues include investigation of Insurance trade practices by Allstate in Florida.
The commissioner stated that: “I also, though, have made it perfectly clear that failure to cooperate with necessary, ongoing requests from the Office (OIR) will result in an immediate resumption of the suspension.”
The OIR is investigating Allstate for issues related to trade practices in a number of areas including their handling of claims in Florida. Allstate refused to produce documents requested in the investigation and so their privileges to sell insurance were revoked. Allstate appealed, got the right to sell insurance back and then it was revoked again. Now with Allstate’s promise to follow the law like everyone else hopefully they will allow a look into how they treat human beings who need insurance benefits. Essentially Allstate’s claim that “you are in good hands with Allstate” is being investigated by the State.
We have seen many cases where honest insureds were treated like frauds by insurance companies, including their own company, just because they were in an accident and need benefits. After all that is why you buy insurance in the first place. We have a case where a young man has over $300,000.00 in medical bills from a crash and the insurance company would not pay the measly $10,000.00 in insurance benefits. We have a case where an insurance company dropped coverage for a woman because she did not attend questioining under oath by her own company. The problem is the date indicated for the questioning was already past and, presumably, since she did not own a time machine which is the only way she could have ever attended the exam at the date on the letter, the insurance company dropped her benefits and refused to provide her with coverage. Her family were insured for many, many years and paid thousands in premiums only to be treated this way in a time of need.
Insurance companies need to shape up and realize that good hard working people get hurt and need care and if they took their premium they need to pay the benefits not use subterfuge and deceit to get out of it.
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