Some states hit insurance producers with a lot more fines than others, and some are more likely to impose a fine than to get a producer to pay any ill-gotten money back to the customers.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners gives a little information about trends in producer fines in volume one of its new 2016 Insurance Department Resources Report.
The NAIC is a Kansas City, Missouri-based group for insurance departments. It creates the resources report to show how many people and how much cash each state devote to regulating insurance, and how much insurance compliance activity each state handles.
The report includes a great deal of interesting information about how insurance regulation works.
California, the state with the biggest department, has an insurance department staff of 1,392 and a 2016 budget of $204 million. Its deputy and assistant commissioners earned annual salaries ranging from $61,800 to $195,696.
Two U.S. territories, American Samoa and the U.S. Virginia Islands, had no insurance regulators in 2016. The state with the smallest insurance department staff, had 26 employees and an annual budget of $3 million. Wyoming's deputy and assistant commissioners earned annual salaries ranging from $84,960 to $127,440.
About half of state insurance departments expect to have a budget over $15 million in 2018, and about half expect to have 2018 budgets under $15 million.
Insurance agents and brokers might find the section on regulation of insurance producers interesting. The number of insurance producer fines in each state ranges from none to 4,671.
Here's a look at the number of insurance producer fines in each state. We also give the number of producer-related cases involving restitution. A low number of restitution cases might mean that producers in a state rarely harm customers, or that producers who do harm customers are unable to pay restitution, but it could also have something to do with how a state regulates producers.
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5. California
Number of licensed producers: 396,891
Number of fines in 2016: 158
Total value of fines: $1,176,666
Average amount per fine: $7,447
Number of restitutions: 2
Number of fines in 2014: 124
4. Ohio
Number of licensed producers: 221,857
Number of fines in 2016: 207
Total value of fines: $60,550
Average amount per fine: $292
