Pennsylvania Reclaimed $185M for Consumers in 2015

Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Teresa Miller announced that the state’s Insurance Department reclaimed $185,055,050 for insurance consumers in the state during 2015.

The commissioner said that throughout 2015, the state’s Insurance Department helped 12,307 consumers around Pennsylvania receive some form of restitution payment or credit.

Miller said consumer protection is a top priority for Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf and the Insurance Department.

A large share of the reclaimed funds came from settlements with life insurance companies. The Insurance Department said last August that it recovered more than $70 million overall for nearly 4,300 beneficiaries through the first six months of 2015. Pennsylvania continues to serve as a lead state in several multi-state examinations of business practices in the life insurance industry.

The department said some companies in the life insurance industry were making selective use of the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File (DMF), and instead of paying policy benefits upon a policyholder’s death, the companies were only terminating payment of annuity benefits.

These life insurance companies will now properly use the DMF to identify potentially unpaid insurance benefits and locate beneficiaries, the department said.

Other examples of restitution included: refunding of overcharged premiums when an insurer was found to be charging premiums above the approved rate; and processing and payment of previously denied or underpaid claims when an insurer did not pay a claim as it should under the consumer’s policy.