NU Online News Service, Jun, 3:52 p.m. EDT
A bill that would have banned credit scoring in Connecticut was altered and then died in the Senate at the end of a legislative session characterized as "challenging" by one insurance industry representative.
Paul Tetrault, Northeast state affairs manager for the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC) said the new co-chair of the legislature's Insurance Committee, Rep. Steve Fontana, D-North Haven, had indicated that credit scoring was an issue he wanted to address.
Some other committee members, Mr. Tetrault said, also had concerns about how credit scoring is affecting people in the current environment.
A spokesman for the Connecticut House Democratic leadership did not return a call.
After a lengthy hearing, Mr. Tetrault said the bill, HB 6444, was modified so that a ban on the use of credit information was removed from the bill, and it was changed to effectively codify the insurance department's existing guidelines on the use of credit information.
Laura Kersey, assistant vice president, Northeast region for the American Insurance Association (AIA) said the revised bill passed in the House on May 26, and the Senate simply ran out of time to take up the bill before the end of the legislative session.
Both Mr. Tetrault and Ms. Kersey said the revised bill could be reintroduced during the next legislative session.
Mr. Tetrault said this past session was challenging, forcing the industry into a defensive role much of the time. "There were a lot of high-priority issues that were dealt with," he said.
For the most part, though, Mr. Tetrault said the industry fared well in Connecticut.
The industry even saw the state extend the sunset of its flex rating provision for personal risks for two more years. Ms. Kersey noted the law would have sunset on July 1 without the extension. It provides for a six percent band within which insurers could raise or lower rates without prior department approval.
Ms. Kersey said the bill went through without opposition and had the support of the insurance department.
She and Mr. Tetrault said they would like to see the sunset provision removed entirely, but they viewed the extension as a positive.
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