Latest Insurance News

EDITORIAL ; Clear Roadblocks to Auto Reform

It's a miracle Massachusetts policy-makers ever managed to find consensus on a health insurance reform law, because even the most incremental progress in reforming our AUTOinsurance system has some of them tied in knots. Insurance Commissioner Nonnie Burnes last week released the regulations that she proposes to govern the auto insurance market, and folks, we're talking pretty timid stuff here. Yes, insurers would, for the first time in three decades, be permitted to set their own rates i...

New GEICO Spots Feature Some Old-School Pop Icons / Geckos and Cavemen, Make Way for Ads With Flintstones and the Cabbage Patch Kids

By JEFFREY KELLEY Latest Martin Agency campaign Cavemen and geckos are already synonymous with GEICO insurance. A Richmond ad shop next wants to elevate Fred Flintstone, Jed Clampett and the Cabbage Patch Kids to that level, too. Starting today, the latest ad campaign by The Martin Agency for the auto insurance company begins. It sets out to show that these old-school pop icons made their fortunes by switching insurers. The latest 30-second spots are a parody on the E! network's tablo...

Business IN BRIEF

THE Government were urged yesterday to keep factories for disabled workers in business by awarding them millions of pounds worth of contracts. The GMB union said contracts to supply military and nurses' uniforms, which end soon, should be given to Remploy factories. Union bosses are furious at Remploy's plans to shut 43 plants with the loss of more than 2000 jobs. Phil Davies of the GMB said: "Remploy have struggled since the mid-90s when the Tory government insisted that contracts for ...

Legal & General Considering Using Postcodes to Determine Pension Payouts

UK life and pensions specialist Legal & General has teamed up with Hargreaves Lansdown, a provider of annuity services to Legal & General's customers, to run a pilot study to establish the benefits of using a customer's postcode as an additional risk factor in determining the annuity income that may be provided.The Financial Times reported that, under the pilot scheme, Legal & General will offer different rates for its annuity pension plans depending on location and revealed that it is expect...

The Further Away They Go to School, the Less Likely They Are to Wreck the Family Car.*

By KARA MCGUIRE | (MINNEAPOLIS) STAR TRIBUNE Sending Junior away for college can bring some savings - and not just because he can't skip home to do laundry and raid the fridge. Many auto insurers will lower if not eliminate the cost of coverage for a son or daughter who attends school far enough from home. This and other ways to reduce your auto insurance premium should come as welcome news for parents of college students . After all, it's back-to-school time, which means that buying book...

The $40 Million Head-On

By Yurcan, Bryan F When an insurance company tells you after an accident which body shop to go to, you might not think twice about it. But Greg Coccaro Sr. is trying to change all that. The president of North State Custom in Bedford Hills is seeking more than $40 million from Mayfield Village, Ohio-based insurance company Progressive Corp. and claiming that its "Direct Repair Program" (DRP) is in violation of New York state law. DRP is a program used by most large auto insurance com...

Customer Survey Knocks Travelers: Low Rank for Auto Insurer May Stem From Merger

By Nicole Garrison-Sprenger, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn. Sep. 1--St. Paul-based Travelers Cos. ranks just about last among its auto insurance peers in the latest customer satisfaction study by J.D. Power and Associates. Out of 25 carriers, Travelers came in fourth lowest with a score of 750 on a 1,000-point scale. Amica Mutual took the No. 1 spot on the list with a score of 837. The study measured customer satisfaction in five areas: interaction, policy offering, billing, price and cla...

ABC Hopes 'Cavemen' Catches Fire

By PHIL ROSENTHAL, CHICAGO TRIBUNE In the largely unnecessary tradition of "Baby Bob," "The California Raisins," "Max Headroom" and "Hey Vern! It's Ernest!" ABC is poised to introduce an ad-inspired sitcom, "Cavemen," based on the Cro-Magnons who shill for Geico insurance. The Geico gecko, one presumes, was deemed too highbrow, and the good hands of Allstate must have held out for too much money. "When we were making the [Geico cavemen] commercials, we just felt like there were more sto...

Weekly Recap of Business News

PARTY STORE CHAIN BUYS TWO MORE SHOPS Dedham-based iParty can celebrate its latest victory, buying out the last shops of rival Party City in New England, except in western and central Connecticut. Party City last year agreed to cede most of the New England market to iParty, but two Party City franchises, in Lincoln, R.I., and Warwick, R.I., still operated independently. IParty just inked a deal to buy both of them and convert them to iParty stores in January. EMC SUBSIDIARY'S IPO A ROUSIN...

On Tap This Week

MASS ACTION A special legislative committee meets at 11 a.m. Thursday at the State House to continue hearings on automobile insurance reform. Last week, Insurance Commissioner Nonnie Burnes heard from testy senators about the flaws in the administration plan to do away with state-regulated auto insurance rates and welcome competition. The Cape Cod Commission meets in Barnstable on Thursday. The commission is expected to take up the controversial Nantucket Sound wind farm proposal from Cap...