Spend Hours at Whiner’s Wharf (Return to main brochure) Stock Market and Tax Windfall Thanks in part to the strong stock market, the property/casualty insurance industry has accumulated an astounding record-breaking surplus totaling $914 billion. Fitch Ratings, “U.S. P/C Insurers Report 2020 Underwriting Profits Despite Costs of COVID-19: Fitch,” Insurance... Continue reading

Take Our Special Driving Lesson (Return to main brochure) Auto insurance companies made a windfall from COVID-19. Early into the pandemic, consumer groups (specifically the Consumer Federation of America and the Center for Economic Justice) began pressing auto insurance carriers for premium refunds as people stopped driving. While some companies... Continue reading

Chill Out While Our PR Experts Do the Work (Return to main brochure) In 2019, as the insurance cycle predictably turned after 13 years of low rates, the industry apparently needed a public relations term to help make the case that it was suffering losses and needed to raise rates... Continue reading

Shop At Our Exclusive “Spin Boulevard” (Return to main brochure) For decades, the insurance industry has created crises in insurance affordability and availability, while falsely blaming juries and victims for the industry’s own mismanaged underwriting cycle. J. Robert Hunter, Joanne Doroshow and Douglas Heller, How the Cash Rich Insurance Industry... Continue reading

Hoard Your Money at Pirate’s Cove (Return to main brochure) With courtrooms shut down for most of 2020, civil jury trials nearly or completely disappeared. Civil cases in many places are now extremely backlogged and with many cases unlikely to be heard for years. See, for example, Benjamin Gideon, “Maine... Continue reading

Sources Relax at Profit Beach (Return to main brochure) U.S. property/casualty (P/C) insurers made substantial profits in 2020, accumulated record- breaking surplus (increasing to $914 billion), paid “far less” in pandemic-related claims than they once insisted they’d be paying, and are still hitting struggling policyholders with huge rate hikes. Leslie... Continue reading

Are you an Insurance Industry Fat Cat? Has the COVID-19 pandemic gotten you down, with too many stories about sick people and collapsing businesses, when your billion-dollar industry has received no sympathy at all? Are you looking for a colony of grievance-filled Insurance Industry Fat Cats who share your pain... Continue reading

Relax at Profit Beach We know that watching your profits double during the COVID-19 pandemic has been the perfect salve during these stressful times. To maintain your blissful stupor, we’ll help you hide the fact that these profits have come at the expense of your own struggling policyholders, whose claims... Continue reading

Hoard Your Money at Pirate’s Cove As any feral cat knows, hoarding food can be important. Same with hoarding money. At Insurance Isle, our adage is, “It’s a pandemic – hoard all the money you can!” Take advantage of the fact that jury trials are backlogged for years. Stop paying... Continue reading

Shop At Our Exclusive “Spin Boulevard” No Insurance Fat Cat should feel like a loser, especially while shopping! You deserve better when your insurance lawyers lose cases because they can’t defend horrible misconduct (or maybe they’re just bad lawyers). We will help you feel better by sending you on a... Continue reading

Chill Out While Our PR Experts Do the Work We know you need help convincing your customers that you deserve more wealth at their expense. Put your paws up while we do the hard work for you! Our team of PR experts are standing by ready to assist. (And believe... Continue reading

Take Our Special Driving Lesson As part of our guest lecture series, we’re honored to present our Auto Insurance Industry Fat Cat friends, who have graciously offered to show how they worked the pandemic for maximum greed, er, bliss. With people home, there was a huge decline in driving, car... Continue reading

Insurance Isle Written by Joanne Doroshow, Executive Director, Center for Justice & Democracy. Illustrations (and great editorial assistance) by Jason Stout, Austin, Texas. For more information, including additional sources and backup, see How the Cash Rich Insurance Industry Fakes Crises and Invents Social Inflation (March 2020). To understand how the... Continue reading

Spend Hours at Whiner’s Wharf We understand your need to gripe, but we know playing the pandemic victim while the nation struggles may not be the smartest move. You need a safe place to go! That’s why we set up Whiner’s Warf, where you can go and complain without limits... Continue reading

Thank you for enjoying our insurance guide! For more information, including sources and backup, see How the Cash Rich Insurance Industry Fakes Crises and Invents Social Inflation (March 2020). Written by Joanne Doroshow, Executive Director, Center for Justice & Democracy. Illustrations by Jason Stout, Austin, Texas. For questions, please contact:... Continue reading

When Words Aren’t What They Are Insurance words are more like terms of art. A special kind of art. Like the fraudulent kind, sold to you by a dealer who told you it was something it wasn’t and then charged you full price. Here are some favorite examples: Incomprehensibly Comprehensive... Continue reading

No One’s Watching Government oversight over insurance pricing and coverage barely exists. Insurers mostly do what they want. Congress has prohibited any federal regulation of insurance. It delegated insurance regulation to the states, with no standards and no oversight. Most state insurance departments have weak or non-existent authority over insurance... Continue reading

Anyone Else Would Go to Jail For insurance companies, price-fixing (coordinating with others as to what they’ll charge you) is perfectly legal. They collude, and you get price-gouged. For any other industry, this would be a crime. In 1944, Congress passed the McCarran-Ferguson Act, a law that exempts the insurance... Continue reading

Party Like It’s 1999 When the industry complains that claims have increased, it never adjusts its data for inflation or population, masking the fact that adjusted claims have been stable for decades. Since 1999, total commercial insurance payouts have never spiked and have generally tracked the rate of inflation and... Continue reading

Hiding Wealth with Tricks and Loopholes When the insurance industry says it’s suffering losses it’s usually massively prospering. When the industry argues that it needs to raise rates or else it will risk financial peril, this is easily proven untrue. For example, while recently arguing for rate hikes, insurers’ surplus... Continue reading

A Loss is Not a Loss When insurance companies say they’ve lost money, they haven’t. It’s just an accounting trick. The unique accounting practices of the insurance industry allow companies to identify “losses” that are not really losses at all. To an insurance company, the word “loss” is short for... Continue reading

Crying All the Way to the Bank How do insurers make money? By pocketing and investing the premiums you pay them. Insurers make their money primarily from investment income, investing the premiums they receive from policyholders. In fact, in only a quarter of the last 50 years have insurers achieved... Continue reading

The property/casualty insurance industry is one of the most important yet least understood industries in the nation. Every person and business in America needs insurance but few understand how it works. As a result, the industry can make extraordinary claims and demands on policymakers – and policyholders – that go... Continue reading