California insurance department accused of hiding information on life insurance complaints

A Bay Area consumer-advocacy group claims California’s Department of Insurance is violating state public-records law by refusing to hand over important data on consumer complaints about life insurance.

The Pleasant Hill-based non-profit Life Insurance Consumer Advocacy Center called the department’s purported violation of the California Public Records Act “inexcusable.”

The department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Numbers and types of consumer complaints about life insurance and annuities, plus the reports and data the department used for the complaints section of its 2023 annual report, would help the non-profit promote the interests of life insurance customers, and provide key information to establish a baseline on consumer complaints.

“Why is (the department) trying to hide this information?” said the group’s executive director Brian Brosnahan.

Of particular interest to the group is assessing consumers’ responses after passage this year of California Senate Bill 263, which imposes requirements for agents selling life insurance, including that they not put their own interest ahead of a customer’s. The group alleges that the the bill, now law, lets agents “falsely tell” a consumer they do not have conflicts of interest with the consumer, even if they stand to make substantial commissions if the customer follows their guidance.

The Department of Insurance’s alleged stonewalling has gone on for months, the group said in a news release Tuesday. An initial request in August drew a response from the department that it did not have the information, according to the group, which responded by pointing out that the department’s annual report contained charts showing total complaints and the top 10 complaint topics. The department “obviously did possess the requested information,” the group claimed.

Another back-and-forth followed, with the department saying the requested data was “not maintained by the Department,” the group said.

“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 department “finally admitted that it possessed the requested data,” the group said, but now is refusing to provide it, saying it is confidential, the group said.

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