NU Online News Service, June 12, 2003, 5:17 p.m. EDT – Monumental Life Insurance Company, Baltimore, says it has agreed to give $35 million in extra benefits to 400,000 current policyholders and 100,000 past beneficiaries to resolve regulators’ concerns about policies that may have been issued with rates based on race.
Monumental emphasizes in a statement about the settlement that it discovered the potential problems itself and that it was responsible for bringing the findings to the attention of regulators in Maryland and other states.
“Monumental Life has never issued policies with race-distinct premiums,” the company says in the statement.
But, during the 1990s, through acquisitions, Monumental assumed responsibility for about 5 million policies issued by more than 240 companies, the company says.
Monumental began auditing the policies issued by the other companies in 2000 and “found evidence of situations where policies were likely to have been priced differently based upon, among other things, race,” the company says.
Most of the policies involved were issued before 1965, the company says.