Mike Kreidler has announced that he has testified against of the use of credit scores by insurers.
The latest insurance news out of Washington is that Mike Kreidler, the state’s commissioner, testified on January 30 as a reflection of his support of a new bill that is a bipartisan initiative to stop insurers from being able to use credit information to calculate homeowners policy premiums.
House Bill 1212 separates homeowners coverage from the current Washington law restricting credit history use.
The current regulations within the state limit the extent to which insurers are allowed to use credit history factors to calculate premiums or deny coverage altogether. HB1212 is making homeowners insurance news because it would stop those companies from being able to use that information at all in the calculation of premiums or to deny coverage.
This is only the most recent of many insurance news announcements Kreidler has made to try to implement the ban.
He has been actively making homeowners insurance news headlines by trying to ban the use of credit history information for the last thirteen years. It was that long ago that Washington state first allowed the behavior by insurers. However, Kreidler feels that the use of this data is blatantly unfair and is discriminatory, particularly in an economy such as the current one.
Kreidler explained that “Thousands of consumers have contacted my office over the last several years, complaining about their insurance company’s use of credit scoring.” He added that “They say, ‘I pay my bills on time, I pay my premium, have never filed a claim — why is my premium going up?’ House Bill 1212 provides important protections for people who’ve been denied homeowners insurance or who’ve seen their premium go up, simply because of an arbitrary factor in their credit history.”
It is for precisely that reason that the commissioner has stepped back into insurance news when he testified against the use of that data, and showed his support for the House Bill 1212.
The industry itself voiced its opinion in the latest insurance news, as well, having said that it believes that the use of credit scores is more than fair as it offers a type of reward for responsible behavior.
