Texas Department of Insurance
National Association of Insurance Commisioner’s
Home Insurance Rates News Release: 1/17/2005
Category: Home Insurance Rate Enforcement
Washington, DC – A federal judge today ruled in favor of the
National Association of Insurance Commisioners and its efforts to recoup more than $100 million for home insurance consumers nation wide, an amount which the agency contends that a select few insurance companies may have overcharged home insurance consumers by inflating
Texas home insurance prices and
Texas home insurance
quotes.
The federal judicial panel and courts actions allows the NAIC to help reduce
Texas home insurance
rates. The objective of NAIC staff throughout this action has been to provide home insurance rate relief for home insurance consumer policyholders who have been charged excessive home insurance rates.
NAIC staff, using authority granted by the federal judicial panel’s decision, ordered home insurance companies to reduce its home owners rates by 12 percent in September 2004.
Texas home insurance companies appealed the reduction in district court, claiming that the they had been denied due process in ordering the rate reduction.
“NAIC staff’s latest action, based on a different law was designed to address the court’s concerns regarding due process,” said NAIC’s Deputy Commissioner for Policy. “Despite the insurance companies objections, the courts have allowed the debate based on the facts to move forward. In the end we believe the facts will show that their rates can be reduced.”
NAIC staff contends that home insurance companies have been overcharging its policyholders since June 11, 2003, the effective date of Senate Bill 14. NAIC is seeking a refund of the excessive premium plus 10 percent interest. The total amount will be calculated from June 11, 2003, to present.
More Texas Facts
- Americans, led by Stephen F. Austin, began to settle along the Brazos River in 1821 when Texas was controlled by Mexico, recently independent from Spain. In 1836, following a brief war between the American settlers in Texas and the Mexican government, the Independent Republic of Texas was proclaimed with Sam Houston as president. This war was famous for the battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto. After Texas became a state in 1845, border disputes led to the Mexican War of 1846–1848. Possessing enormous natural resources, Texas is a major agricultural state and an industrial giant. Second only to Alaska in land area, it leads all other states in such categories as oil, cattle, sheep, and cotton. Texas ranches and farms also produce poultry and eggs, dairy products, greenhouse and nursery products, wheat, hay, rice, sugar cane, and peanuts, and a variety of fruits and vegetables. Sulfur, salt, helium, asphalt, graphite, bromine, natural gas, cement, and clays are among the state's valuable resources. Chemicals, oil refining, food processing, machinery, and transportation equipment are among the major Texas manufacturing industries.
Millions of tourists spend well over $20.6 billion annually visiting more than 100 state parks, recreation areas, and points of interest such as the Gulf Coast resort area, the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Alamo in San Antonio, the state capital in Austin, and the Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Lone Star State From an Indian word meaning “friends”
The ten largest cities in Texas are: Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso, Fort Worth, Arlington, Corpus Christi, Plano, Garland.
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