Tempers flared during a meeting last Wednesday at the State House about the next step in Massachusetts’ transition to a competitive auto insurance market.
The furor’s most frequent target: Insurance Commissioner Nonnie S. Burnes, who listened for two hours to more than 100 insurance agents express fear and anger that the changes will force them to close up shop.
“Look at the people in this room,” said Marie-Armel Theodat of Theodat Insurance Agency in Dorchester. “These are the people you’re putting out of business. And we’re here to tell you: It’s not fair.”
Theodat and the other agents in attendance operate as exclusive representative producers (ERPs). Since the 1970s, ERPs have been charged with writing car insurance policies for drivers placed into Massachusetts’ “high risk” pool — the customers that insurers wouldn’t voluntarily cover because they believed the drivers posed too high a risk. That non-voluntary market has been governed by the industry-operated Commonwealth Automobile Reinsurers (CAR).
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