Reaction to allegations that North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey sent suggestive texts to a staff member over several years has been muted.
Causey declined to comment to Insurance Journal a day after the Raleigh News & Observer reported that a former Department of Insurance regional office director, April Taylor, had revealed the texts.
“We are unable to discuss the article since it relates to a personnel matter of a former employee,” DOI’s deputy director of communications, Barry Smith, said in an email.
Causey, 75, told the News & Observer that he did not recall sending inappropriate texts and denied initiating inappropriate physical contact. Taylor showed the newspaper some screenshots of the texts, but Causey declined to let a reporter look at his phone, the N&O reported.
Since the N&O articles ran May 20, only two other news outlets have reported about the newspaper story and the texts, according to a Google News search.
Taylor, 50, left the department earlier this year. She said she had developed issues with coworkers after she transferred to DOI’s bail bond division, and she said Causey had failed to support her in the role. She filed several complaints about the division and about Causey allegedly using state resources for campaign purposes, the newspaper reported.
“I am unemployed, and I know God’s going to get me through this. My career is probably over with the state because I’ve blown the whistle, and that’s fine,” Taylor told the N&O. “But I want this man exposed.”
Taylor has not filed legal actions against Causey.
Looking ahead, the tally of about 30 active private-equity-backed brokers, as well as private and public buyers, continues to fuel demand for the 25,000 to 30,000 agencies nationally–a majority of which are “very small and will have to be sold eventually,” said OPTIS managing partner Tim Cunningham.
“We are seeing an emerging group of new ventures backed by private-equity and family-office capital pursuing this group because of the large supply of future sellers, enhancements in technology, and long-term changes in the way insurance at the smaller end will be sold and serviced,” Cunningham added. OPTIS also said somewhat larger firms will be attractive to buyers, partly due to a “perceived scarcity factor” and improvements the businesses have made.