Nearly a year ago Attorney General Martha Coakley proposed new regulations to protect auto insurance consumers, but she’s never pulled the trigger and implemented them.
Coakley solicited feedback on her proposal last summer and since then has kept extending the deadline for comments for several months at a time. The current deadline is April 15.
Automobile insurers say they don’t know what’s going on with the regulations or with Coakley. When the regulations were first unveiled, the insurers made clear they didn’t like them. They hope the delays continue indefinitely.
Coakley’s regulations focus on the rating factors that insurers use to decide how much to charge drivers for coverage. When the state used to set auto insurance rates, insurers could only consider factors such as a customer’s driving history, their vehicle type, and the vehicle’s garaging location.
After the Patrick administration embraced managed competition among auto insurers, more experimentation was allowed. Coakley fears some companies are using a customer’s payment history or purchase of homeowners insurance as proxies for banned factors like income, home ownership, and credit ratings.
Insurers say Coakley’s regulations would kill off many of the pricing discounts they have introduced and drive up premium costs. Coakley isn’t saying much of anything about her regulations, which seem to be caught in an endless feedback loop. “We continue to receive feedback and to evaluate the proposed auto insurance regulations,” says Coakley’s spokeswoman.