If your own home burns down, I don’t imagine the general public has a proper to know your title, deal with and the way a lot the insurance coverage firm paid you on your loss.
The Seattle Occasions’ April 8 editorial agrees with my workplace on a kind of factors — though the rationale supplied for the remainder of its disagreements lacks context.
The editorial — “Bills requested by WA insurance commissioner bypass transparency” — takes purpose at two provisions in two items of laws, Senate Invoice 5419 and Senate Invoice 5262.
On SB 5419, The Occasions argues that info displaying an insurance coverage firm dragging its ft after a wildfire would now not be publicly accessible. That’s a misrepresentation of what the invoice does.
Ninety days after the declare closes, insurers should report: The deal with, date and reason for the hearth; the quantity the corporate paid; the origin and reason for the hearth; and the corporate monitoring quantity.
No “client watchdog” might monitor whether or not an insurance coverage firm was sluggish in making funds with out understanding protection limits and the specifics of the loss. The data isn’t reported till three months after the declare closes, in order that hypothetical feels far-fetched.
They may, nevertheless, request information on complaints filed with our workplace from folks being mistreated by their insurance coverage firm. We’re blissful to indicate our work to assist shoppers, whereas defending their private monetary info.
The exemption in SB 5262 got here on the request of the suppliers submitting their info. We don’t regulate them however do ask for his or her knowledge, for mixture reporting to the Legislature. They requested for a similar exemptions we give to the entities we regulate (established in SSB 5806, which handed each chambers unanimously in 2024 with no curiosity from The Occasions).
We supplied to strike that exemption after a request from the newspaper publishers’ lobbyist throughout a listening to and labored with the publishers and the state medical affiliation on an modification to slim the exemption.
The data exempted beneath these payments belongs to non-public residents.
These payments make clear present regulation; they don’t curtail anybody’s proper to public info. The one particular curiosity concerned is my curiosity in strengthening the protections personal residents have over their private info.
