NAMIC CEO Responds to Latest Ruling in Disparate Impact Case

Neil Alldredge, president and CEO of the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, made the following statement in response to a ruling from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in the association’s challenge to a Department of Housing and Urban Development rule to impose a disparate impact standard for the pricing and provision of homeowners insurance.

“NAMIC and its members vehemently oppose all forms of illegal discrimination. The HUD rule, however, extends beyond those concepts and into a new realm of lawmaking by agency instead of our elected congressional leaders. Attempting to recast the nation’s insurance industry from a risk transfer system into an agent of political policymaking is both dangerous and unfair to consumers.

“The court’s decision to allow the federal government to shoehorn a disparate impact standard onto risk-based homeowners’ insurance will have significant negative consequences for consumers. The rule threatens to inhibit insurers’ ability to accurately evaluate risk and will unnecessarily raise insurance costs for consumers.”