About three months after it detected suspicious activity within its network systems, AssuranceAmerica has started alerting consumers.
The Atlanta-based managing general agency with about 9,500 agents selling personal auto, renters, and commercial auto policies in 14 states, said on March 17 it detected the suspicious activity targeting one employee.
The MGA said it notified authorities and immediately enlisted an outside forensic specialist. It was determined an unauthorized third party accessed the company’s systems through the targeted attack and copied “a number of data files,” according to the breach notice filed in at least a half-dozen states.
AssuranceAmerica said that, due to the scope and the files involved, the investigation was only recently completed.
Some customer personal identifiable information was within accessed files, including names, contact information, insurance policy and account information, vehicle information, claims information, drivers’ license numbers, and Social Security numbers.
“We promptly disabled and took offline the affected company server devices,” Assurance America said. “To help prevent a simitar occurrence in the future, the company has implemented a number of measures designed to enhance the security of our IT systems and data stored in those systems.”
Later in the session, a media representative asked another panelist, Jim Williamson, president and CEO of Everest Group, Ltd., if there’s an end in sight to increasing litigation settlements and jury awards.
“How does this end? How can the industry tackle its problem?”
Referencing Farney’s comments, Williamson said the state-by-system in the United States provides “a laboratory of different outcomes based on different inputs,” pointing to Florida as a state adopting thoughtful, economically sensible policies and getting the problems under control.
Within the insurance industry on the commercial liability insurance side, Williamson and Fairfax Insurance Group President Brian Young discussed individual underwriter moves to compress limits in recent years in response to the pressures of increased claims severity. For the industry as a whole, however, “that’s made us more vulnerable to social inflation because everybody’s capitulating,” Williamson suggested, going on to specifically describe situations where excess insurers force resolution of claims in lower layers when case facts don’t warrant those actions. “I’ve withdrawn the authority for my team to hammer people underneath us,” he said. “I need to make those decisions because that’s not necessarily the right behavior for us as an industry to manage these claims.”
Williamson believes others in the industry are also getting smarter about claims management. “AI will help us manage claims, and we’re using it at Everest to accelerate to outside counsel or more seasoned adjusters when we think there are factors that will result in an outsized award,” he added.
“So, it’s going to end because it’s just one of those things that cannot go on. The industry, I think, will mainly influence it by claim management and our own behavior. I’m a little less optimistic about the industry’s ability to educate its way out of this problem just because we’re the wrong message bearer,” Williamson said. “I always tell my insurance clients, you’re the person to deliver this message—the trucking firm, the retailer, the industrial company… Tell your Congressman.”
Farney agreed. “When the industry does it, it feels self-serving. Even though we’re mutual and we don’t really have the same profit motive as a lot of our competitors, people still think, ‘It’s the greedy insurance company.'”