California Insurance

New Jersey plans this week to distribute package of new rules bar the use of the age, sex or family situation in automobile insurance rates.

The new regulations, with effect from 1st January 1993, it is also require that businesses with less weight on the geographical location of the property prices and lists the factors must be taken when setting their rates.

Firing the latest blow in a bitter, protracted war with insurance companies, Jim Berzok, a spokesman for the State Insurance Department, said the company is a summary of the provisions of this week. They were released in early January but was delayed while the state is reviewing the objections of the industry.

Insurance Commmissioner Samuel S. Fortunato, has been struggling with insurers for two years, has insisted that prices are based on demographic factors in the industry for 60 years, is not acceptable in the computer age.

In testimony before the Committee on Senate last week, he said to emphasize the new rules of conduct of each record, rather as a “group of properties” as a set of determinants.

Ronald Krauss, Vice President of the American Insurance Association, an association which is headquartered in New York, said the insurer against the rules to eliminate as age, sex and family status as predictors the performance of conduct steals light of experience gained over the decades. “Year after year, and the state of their state,” he said, “they provide risk are reliable.”

Mr. Krauss said that insurance companies take into account other factors, but not exclusively on them when setting prices.

These are the factors, New Jersey, insurers use when setting the exchange rate:

A motorist grasp the changes, including points of injuries and accidents error.

A driver experience.

The number of kilo-meters, a motorist driving each year.

The brand and model of the car.

Mr. Krauss and others in the insurance industry claim that the new guidelines will not lower tax rates, but only move around costs. He said that young women, for example, would pay higher premiums because their age and sex can not be taken into account when setting prices. Insurance actuaries say that while the loophole, young women are still less likely to be involved in accidents than young men. A request for revision

Changes in regulations have been Dir Jim Florio’s Fair Automobile Insurance Reform Act, “by the legislature in 1990.

The proposed rules, insurance companies in January to such an avalanche of protests and numerous calls for revision, the insurance division agreed on a final check before the regulations were approved.

Several other states have a mandate the elimination of age, sex and family situation as a whole Determinierer, but did not go as far as the proposal of New Jersey, said Krauss.

“No State has angered to release all three - age, sex and family situation - like the region as a factor of decommissioning,” he said. He said, Hawaii, Massachusetts and California had the mandate the elimination of age, sex and family situation, and that Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina had the mission of the elimination of one or two of them. California’s system is challenged in the courts and is the subject of intense consultations fixation.

In New Jersey, the insurer would have allowed driver of a location in determining rates, but its importance would be demoted. Most companies, for example, do you consider the car insurance in Newark a greater risk that insurers in many other parts of the country, because Newark has the highest rate of the Automobile theft in the country.

The new guidelines are the latest development in a struggle for the price of auto insurance in New Jersey. The first big change was the abolition of the State running pool, provided that drivers at high risk, the Joint Underwriting Association.

The insurance pool was to ensure that drivers most at risk, insurance could not get otherwise, but in a point of insurance companies had dumped more than half of the drivers of State will accept the slightest risk to pilots of conventional coverage. This and other shortcomings in the system means that New Jersey’s rate, also a surcharge on most of the insured to pay for the state-Pool, were the highest in the nation during the year 1990, after a survey conducted by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.