It’s a lot easier to be an ambitious, pro-consumer and pro-climate regulator when you aren’t trying to preserve friendships with profit-maximizing insurance CEOs.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Kenny Stancil, stancil@therevolvingdoorproject.org
Dwindling home insurance availability and affordability is a clear manifestation of fossil fuel-driven climate chaos. Today, the Revolving Door Project published two tools to help illuminate aspects of this worsening crisis:
1) Tracking State Insurance Commissioners is a report and database summarizing information about current state-level insurance regulators and their immediate predecessors, including details about their professional backgrounds and, in the case of ex-regulators, their subsequent career moves;
2) Mapping Home Insurance Regulation is a series of interactive maps and tables documenting state-based regulatory differences and the extent to which various state insurance departments are under-resourced.
Regarding the updated state insurance commissioner tracker, Revolving Door Project Deputy Research Director Kenny Stancil said the following:
“Public trust in government is at historic lows and for good reason. Decades of corporate-friendly policies have intensified inequality, and little is being done to address pressing problems, not least of which are the skyrocketing costs of health, home, and auto insurance. When state insurance commissioners come from and return to the very industry they’re tasked with regulating, that exacerbates distrust.
One easy way to begin to restore public confidence in government is for current commissioners to pledge that they will not accept lucrative gigs as insurance executives or lobbyists when they leave office. An added benefit of making such a commitment is that when regulators aren’t worried about maintaining open lines to a cushy future job, they’re better positioned to crack down on predatory corporate practices in the present. It’s a lot easier to be an ambitious, pro-consumer and pro-climate regulator when you aren’t trying to preserve friendships with profit-maximizing insurance CEOs.”
Regarding the new interactive maps on home insurance regulation, Stancil said:
“As long as insurance companies are regulated at the state level, it’s imperative to pay attention to the divergent approaches that jurisdictions take to things like rate review and to clarify the impacts of those differences.
It’s equally important to highlight the extent to which state regulators are ill-equipped to adequately oversee large financial corporations. Allowing major institutional investors, which is what insurers are, to be supervised by an insufficient number of overworked regulators on a shoe-string budget is a recipe for disaster.”
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