The Insurance Industry Confronts Its Own Racism

Discrimination based on race has a long history in the insurance industry, where practices such as race-based premiums and redlining of predominately minority neighborhoods persisted for many decades. Here is how the leading group of insurance regulators is attempting to address the problem.

“The needless deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd have led to a movement on racial equality that we cannot ignore.” — Ray Farmer, National Association of Insurance Commissioners president, in opening remarks at the NAIC Special Session on Race and Insurance, Aug. 13, 2020

NAIC Special Committee on Race and Insurance

In response to member-led discussions, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) Executive Committee announced on July 23, 2020, the formation of a special committee focused on race and insurance.

“Within the NAIC, we’re seeing unprecedented discussions between our members and stakeholders on race and its role in the design and pricing of insurance products, as well as our collective need to improve diversity in the insurance sector particularly in senior leadership roles,” NAIC President Ray Farmer noted. “It is the duty of the insurance sector to address racial inequality while promoting diversity in the insurance sector. If not us, who? If not now, when?”

These issues were aired in a special session on race and insurance on Aug. 13, 2020, as part of the 2020 NAIC Summer National Meeting.

Deep-Rooted Problems

From a historical perspective, according to then-NAIC Secretary-Treasurer Chlora Lindley-Myers, and currently the group’s president, confronting racial discrimination in the insurance industry has been like a roller-coaster ride. Noting that the industry has eliminated many forms of direct racial discrimination, she pointed out that subtle, less obvious forms of discrimination remain.

Race-Based Life Insurance Premiums

George Nichols III, president and CEO of The American College of Financial Services, noted that race-based life insurance premiums, which were part of the marketplace until passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, credited Black customers with only two-thirds of the value of their policies compared to White customers. On top of that, he said, Black policyholders were charged a 30% to 40% premium.

Nichols further noted that despite the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it wasn’t until 2000 that the regulatory community brought action against 90 companies resulting in a $556 million settlement involving about 14.8 million policyholders.

Redlining

According to Dr. Robert Klein, former professor of risk management and insurance at Georgia State University, discrimination in both home and auto insurance was accomplished through a practice known as redlining, an explicit form of discrimination in which a literal red line was drawn on a map outlining urban areas considered to be high risk.

Redlining grew out of the National Housing Act of 1934, which established the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The FHA Underwriting Manual, created in 1936, laid out specific segregationist policies, including phrases such as: “The Valuator should investigate areas surrounding the location to determine whether or not incompatible racial and social groups are present, to the end that an intelligent prediction may be made regarding the possibility or probability of the location being invaded by such groups.” and “Recommended restrictions include …prohibition of the occupancy of properties except by the race for which they are intended.”

In those areas, insurance companies would either not write policies or would charge higher rates. Despite the fact that courts subsequently found redlining based on race to be illegal, a 2018 study by Consumer Reports and ProPublica found disparities in auto insurance prices between minority and White neighborhoods that could not be explained by risk alone.

As a result of that study, the state of California required two insurers, Nationwide and USAA, to adjust their rates and in 2020, the NAIC announced that it would analyze industry practices to determine whether they have a negative impact on minorities.

Credit-Based Insurance Scores

Redlining, Klein said, gave way to a more implicit type of discrimination using credit scores as measures of risk in the 1990s. According to the NAIC, that practice, started by the Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO), continues today in states where it is legal. Although Klein and others have maintained that credit-based insurance scores are discriminatory, FICO says its insurance scores are “completely non-discriminatory and use no data on gender, nationality, ethnicity, address, or income.”

Discriminatory Underwriting Guidelines

Birny Birnbaum, executive director of the Center for Economic Justice, mentioned two types of discrimination with historic roots based on underwriting guidelines that made it difficult, if not impossible, for minorities to obtain either auto or home insurance in Texas. In the first case, underwriting guidelines required anyone seeking auto insurance to have had previous insurance. Many members of minority groups did not because it was not required until 1991. Underwriting guidelines for home insurance were based on age and value which, regulators discovered, was a proxy for race given past discrimination in the neighborhoods where these homes were located.

Lack of Minority Representation in the Insurance Industry

Another area in which discrimination has long roots is the lack of minority representation in both the insurance industry and the regulatory agencies that oversee it. Dr. Leroy Nunery II, founder & principal of PlūsUltré LLC, blamed much of this on lack of exposure, experience, networking, and education within minority communities, something he said insurance companies and regulators need to pay more attention to going forward.

Current Challenges

The NAIC’s research has shown that while some types of discrimination have ebbed, new concerns have arisen. Insurance Commissioner of Connecticut Andrew N. Mais noted the importance of this research in uncovering practices such as the use of big-data, algorithmic-based underwriting models (proxy discrimination), and others that disadvantage minority groups when it comes to access to affordable healthcare, as well as to other insurance products.

Effect of Big Data and Algorithmic Models

Consumer advocate and retired insurance executive Sonja Larkin-Thorne has testified before Congress on her concerns about big data, including unregulated use; lack of privacy, accuracy, and transparency; unreliable sourcing; and unintentional bias and discrimination.

She noted that these unregulated datasets collect information on individuals’ shopping habits, driving patterns, race, age, occupation, education, voting history, marital status, work salary, and Facebook friends, among others. This, in turn, she said, produces “unregulated algorithms that insurance companies are using in rates and underwriting.”

Ultimately, Larkin-Thorne said, what is needed is federal and state regulation, and laws requiring companies to unlock the data and resulting algorithms so consumers know what’s being collected and how it’s being used to underwrite and price insurance products.

Access to Affordable Quality Healthcare

Dr. Dora Hughes, associate research professor of health policy & management at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, suggested that the number of Americans without health insurance, which stood at 30 million before the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, is undoubtedly higher now. That population is disproportionately made up of members of minority groups.

Discrimination, Hughes said, has moved from refusal to cover preexisting conditions, discriminatory pricing, and longer waiting periods, which are now illegal, to practices that amount to coverage discrimination through charging more for conditions that are more prevalent among certain groups. These practices prevent patients—often minority-group members with complex health issues—from obtaining appropriate medical care.

An additional form of discrimination comes when certain drugs used to treat diseases more common to minorities are placed on the highest formulary tier, requiring higher copays. Finally, Hughes noted, physicians in high minority population urban areas tend to receive lower private insurance reimbursement rates, discouraging medical professionals from serving in those areas.

In addition to problems related to the use of big data, Hughes suggested that policymakers address health equity, which she defines as care tailored to each minority group. Insurance coverage must take those needs into consideration, she said. This includes the implementation of value-based insurance that offers lower copays for chronic conditions to help bring the overall cost of treatment down.

Increasing Diversity in the Insurance Sector

The NAIC has also focused on the need to increase diversity within the insurance sector.

A Business Imperative

Then-New York Executive Deputy Superintendent My Chi To told the NAIC that, “Increasing the representation of people of color, women, and other underrepresented groups in the insurance industry and beyond is not only the right thing to do, it is a business imperative.” She pointed to research showing that diverse teams perform better, innovate more, and are more effective at managing risk. “Insurance, she noted, “is all about managing risk.”

Data and Accountability

NAIC member discussions in 2020 also pointed to the need for transparency and measurable data in order to see what works and what doesn’t. Commitment to diversity, To observed, is not something you sprinkle at the top of your organization but a commitment that has to permeate the entire organizational culture and every aspect of the business.

A Pipeline for Talent

As part of a commitment to diversity, NAIC members need to promote the creation of “a pipeline of diverse, talented people who will grow into the leaders of tomorrow,” To stated.

Recommended Consumer-Based Actions

NAIC’s “listen and learn” initiatives have yielded a number of suggestions to address the issues around race and insurance:

• Recognize proxy discrimination as discrimination against protected classes and address it when it occurs.
• Develop better regulatory data collection and analysis to identify discrimination and trace disparate impact similar to the way it is done with financial regulation.
• Update insurance codes and traditional market conduct exams to ensure that such things as risk placement are fair and not discriminatory.
• Provide opportunities for consumer education in minority communities to empower those consumers.
• Strengthen consumer voices in each state through the implementation of dedicated consumer agencies.
• Provide oversight of unregulated big data and vendors of algorithms currently used to establish pricing and claims settlement.
• Continue conversations about race on an ongoing basis within the insurance sector.

Next Steps for the NAIC

The NAIC’s formation of a Special Committee on Race and Insurance and the panel discussion at the 2020 NAIC summer session were good first steps, the group believes. But, as Birnbaum noted, “We have to understand why, despite consumer advocates raising these issues at the NAIC for decades, insurers and regulators failed to acknowledge the severity of the problem until the murder of George Floyd.

Farmer said he believes this moment is different, noting that an unprecedented 51 out of 56 state and regional regulators are members of this NAIC special committee. “We have a historic opportunity,” Farmer said, “as a regulator, a community, and as an important sector of the financial services industry to commit real, meaningful, and lasting change.”

Update: Sept. 17, 2020

The first open meeting of the NAIC Special Committee on Race and Insurance took place online on Sept. 17, 2020. The committee introduced its formal charges, adopted by the NAIC Executive Committee in July, and announced five workstreams that the committee would concentrate on moving forward. The committee is charged with, in its words:

• Conducting research and analyzing the level of diversity and inclusion within the insurance sector;
• Engaging with a broad group of stakeholders on issues related to race, diversity, and inclusion in, and access to, the insurance sector and insurance products;
• Examining and determining which current practices or barriers exist in the insurance sector that potentially disadvantage people of color and/or historically underrepresented groups; and
• Making recommendations to the Executive (EX) Committee and membership by year-end regarding steps: both insurance regulators and the insurance industry can take to increase diversity and inclusion within the sector; that should be taken to address practices that potentially disadvantage people of color and/or historically underrepresented groups; and to ensure ongoing engagement of the NAIC on these issues through charges to its committees, task forces and working groups. 

The five workstreams announced at the meeting were:

• Workstream #1 to focus on diversity within the insurance industry and access to insurance products.
• Workstream #2 to focus on diversity within the insurance regulatory community and the NAIC.
• Workstream #3 to focus on identifying practices or barriers that potentially disadvantage people of color and/or historically underrepresented groups in the property and casualty insurance area.
• Workstream #4 to focus on identifying practices or barriers that potentially disadvantage people of color and/or historically underrepresented groups in the life insurance and annuity areas.
• Workstream #5 to focus on identifying practices or barriers that potentially disadvantage people of color and/or historically underrepresented groups in the health insurance area.

Update: Dec. 7, 2020

At its Dec. 7, 2020 meeting, the Special Committee on Race and Insurance heard status reports from each of the five workstreams and conducted other business. Workstreams 1 and 2, the diversity and inclusion initiatives within both the insurance industry and NAIC reported they had held multiple sessions and were working to provide recommendations to the executive committee in coming months. Workstreams 3, 4, and 5, property and caasualty insurance, life insurance, and health insurance, also reported that they were working on recommendations with focus on action vs. simply acknowledging issues.

Update: Dec. 11, 2021

After more than a full year of meetings and regular updates to the members of the NAIC, the Special Committee on Race and Insurance reported that it would be ready to develop several white papers in 2022 related to the areas covered by the five workstreams, including minority representation in the insurance industry and NAIC, discrimination in property and casualty insurance, in provider networks, and in the health insurance industry.

In terms of a more concrete achievement, the Dec. 11 NAIC national meeting discussed a new law in Colorado designed to ensure that insurers use external data sources in a responsible manner and protect consumers from unfair discrimination.

Update: Dec. 18, 2023

As 2023 came to a close, the NAIC reported that the committee’s work for the year had focused on three of its five workstreams: property and casualty insurance, life insurance and annuities, and health insurance.

The committee was also said to be working with other NAIC groups “on areas of shared interest like predictive modeling, price algorithms, and artificial intelligence.”

The Bottom Line

Discriminatory practices based on race have a long history in the insurance industry. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners launched a committee in 2020 to research the problem and recommend solutions. As of 2024, its work is ongoing.