N.Y. AG, SEC Rush Media Disclosures: Regulator

Competing federal and state investigators are rushing to disclose information to the news media about their investigations of the insurance industry, a regulator told a recent underwriters meeting.

The comments came from Audrey Samers, deputy superintendent and general counsel for the New York State Insurance Department, at a meeting earlier this week of the Minneapolis-based Professional Liability Underwriting Society in New York.

Ms. Samers told the group that the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York attorney general's office are "racing to get press coverage."

The regulator related that minutes after meeting with representatives from the SEC and AG's office, she's gotten cell phone calls from newspaper reporters asking her to confirm that the attorney general has asked her to take certain actions.

"We're not used to doing our examinations in the press," she remarked.

Ms. Samers spoke at a session about ethics in the property-casualty industry and the business practices environment since New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer brought civil and criminal charges against brokers and insurers involved in commercial insurance bid-rigging.

During the session, some speakers criticized the media for its reporting of the insurance industry scandals.

Among the critics was claims professional Ann Marie Marson, a senior vice president at Richmond, Va.-based James River Insurance, who suggested that negative perceptions fueled by press reports have now effectively erased years of work aimed at changing public opinion of insurers by instilling best practices.

But Stephen Sills, chief executive officer of Darwin Professional Underwriters in Farmington, Conn., said press accounts have been fair in reporting complex subjects. "There are people that have done things they shouldn't have done," he said.

"I think that the disinfectant of the sunlight from the front page of the newspaper wakes up a lot of people as to the way they should be doing things a lot better than a memo from the CEO," Mr. Sills commented.