Allstate's Florida License Suspension Extended to Autos

Now Florida regulators won't let Allstate sell auto insurance:

Cranking up the heat, Florida regulators will suspend Allstate's license to sell auto insurance in the state until the company cooperates with an investigation into why its homeowners rates haven't fallen.

It's an unprecedented move for the state Office of Insurance Regulation, which is on the warpath because homeowners' premiums are still high despite passage of an insurance overhaul law in January 2007. The office is seeking information concerning how Allstate sets its rates and pays claims, and the company has refused to provide it.

''This is an ongoing and blatant disregard for the laws of the state of Florida. This can't and won't continue,'' Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty said Wednesday.

"It is clear to me that Allstate must have something to hide, if they are unwilling to comply with the Commissioner's requests," the state's lunatic governor, Charlie Crist, added helpfully. This is a company, by the way, that somehow manages to operate in 49 other states without regularly getting into front-page pissing contests with regulators. Allstate stopped selling new homeowners policies in Florida back in 2004, in part because of the less-than-completely-benign regulatory environment there. Now it's out of the auto business, too, at least for awhile.

How this is supposed to help consumers I don't quite get...

Comments

[WAKEUP:]

It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of THUGS, than Allstate. Allstate is a rip-off outfit, anyway. They are NOTORIOUS, within the insurance industry as being the "pits," when it comes to paying claims. With Allstate, it's all about taking money in, and paying as close to nothing as possible, out.

2008 Jan 18 02:23 PM