Scrounging for Dollars

Let’s pause for a second. The announcement April 24 by state regulators of a settlement with Metropolitan Life of its unclaimed property practices, coupled with an announcement that the settlement could include the return of perhaps $700 million either to policy beneficiaries or to the states, raises more questions than it answers.

The first question it raises is whether states, desperate for revenues, are turning insurance companies upside down in their quest for any loose change, and, in the process, perhaps overdoing it.

Another question it raises is who is minding the store? In other words, probes of the unclaimed property practices of life insurance companies have occurred once each decade at least since the 1970s, but never before have yielded such potential revenues.

Where were the regulators before this? Did they completely miss the boat in examining insurance companies, or in not requiring them to impose policies and programs designed to appropriately handle claims before this?

For years, we have listened to regulators discuss their responsibilities in public hearings and documents. Likewise, state regulators in their testimony also emphasized that their priority was consumer protection. The issue was repeatedly brought up by insurance companies and state regulators in governments in lobbying against allowing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau oversight over insurance companies while the Dodd-Frank financial services reform law was being drafted.

The arguments by the states and their supporters in Congress obviously carried the day. Given the huge sums being talked about in the various settlements so far announced by state regulators with insurance companies over unclaimed property practices, did they mislead Congress in making the argument that insurance regulation should remain local?

In two of the larger states, New York and California, and perhaps others, there appears to be a race to the bottom by insurance regulators, comptrollers, and, in New York’s case, attornies general, to outdo each other in coming down hard on insurance companies on their unclaimed practices policies.

For example, the New York Department of Financial Services, joined by Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced April 24 said an investigation into the unclaimed practices policies of the 172 insurers based in New York has resulted in 32,715 payments to consumers nationwide totaling $262.2 million, including 7,525 payments totaling $95.9 million to New Yorkers.

At the same time, some months ago, New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman said he was teaming with the state’s comptroller into an independent investigation of the unclaimed property issue. Plaintiff’s lawyers and other sources have confirmed that Schneiderman has subpoenaed the records of 10 of the largest life insurers in connection with this independent probe.