NAMIC Urges Caution on Workplace Demographic Information Collection

INDIANAPOLIS, April 25 -- The National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies issued the following news release:

The National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies has called on state insurance regulators to reconsider their efforts to collect demographic information from insurance companies about their boards, vendors, and CEOs. While presumably well intentioned, the association said the Multistate Insurance Diversity Survey issued by five jurisdictions has nothing to do with insurance regulation and is invasive and counterproductive.

"As we make clear in our letter, NAMIC member companies are absolutely committed to diversity in the workplace and absolutely support the full and robust use of all state and federal laws prohibiting workplace discrimination," said Jimi Grande, NAMIC's senior vice president of government affairs. "However, this data call does nothing to combat discrimination and does not contribute to the regulation of the business of insurance, which is why insurance regulators exist in the first place."

The survey, issued by regulators in California, the District of Columbia, New York, Oregon, and Washington state, requires insurers to provide information they may have that could violate protected privacy interests, reveal trade secrets, and potentially expose others to discrimination to obtain. This information, as noted in the letter, has been described as "sensitive recruitment, hiring, and vendor details" by a Minnesota administrative law judge.

"These surveys demand that insurance companies catalog individual employees, vendors, and board members based on their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity," Grande said. "In the first place, much of this information may be inappropriate to collect or even inquire about, and incomplete data can lead to hasty and improper conclusions that could create an unfair impression of a company's conduct that is hard to eradicate. And, adding insult to injury, the cost of complying with these demands and collecting and processing results will ultimately be borne by the very consumers these regulators are supposed to be spending their time protecting.

"Diversity is one of the great strengths of America, as a nation and in our workplaces," Grande continued. "But invading people's privacy and cataloguing them is the wrong way to go about achieving that diversity. We're asking that a reassessment be conducted of the need for and authority used to justify this endeavor."