No matter where you live, Grand Prairie, Arlington, Mansfield, Weatherford, Haslet, Keller, North Richland Hills, Newark, Fort Worth, or any other place in Texas, you hate the thought that your insurance company may be taking advantage of you.
This blog is primarily devoted to claims denial issues and lawsuits that can be brought against insurance companies, agents, and adjusters. Sometimes the wrongs being committed against people by insurance companies are corrected by the Texas Department of Insurance. One example of this is in regulation of rates that the insurance companies are allowed to charge people.
The Austin American-Statesman recently ran an article on this issue. The title of the article is “Hartford agrees to insurance refunds, rate reduction.” This article was written by Tim Eaton on the American-Stateman staff. It was published on July 1, 2010.
In this article, he tells about Texas customers who bought homeowners policies from two subsidiaries of Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., will receive refunds for overcharges. This was announced by state officials the week before.
These refunds affect about 43,000 policyholders according to the Texas Department of Insurance.
According to Deeia Beck, head of Texas’ Office of Public Insurance Counsel, the refunds total $3.8 million, including interest and will be sent out before the end of the year.
The article says that the agreements were finalized last week with the companies and the Office of Public Insurance Counsel and the Texas Department of Insurance.
More good news is that these companies will reduce rates. One company, The Property and Casualty Company of Hartford agreed to a reduction of its rates of 10 percent. The other company, Hartford Lloyds Insurance Company, will drop its rates by 3.1 percent.
Beck said, “We felt that the rate increases these companies implemented last year were too high.” She also said, “We were able to work something out to get the rates reduced and return the overcharges to the policyholders.”
The refunds only average about $41 per home but it is important to note that this only applies to overcharges since January 29, 2010. Further note is that Hartford is not actually admitting they did any overcharging.
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