NY Fines Car Insurers $20 Million Over Reporting Failures

New York has closed a multi-year probe into car insurers’ failure to report timely information.

That investigation, the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) said Monday (Feb. 24), has resulted in $20.4 million in fines on insurers who failed to provide insured vehicle information to the state’s motor vehicles department (DMV) in a timely fashion.

“Accurate and timely reporting by insurers is critical to protecting New Yorkers on the road, ensuring compliance with state laws, and maintaining the integrity of our enforcement systems,” NYDFS superintendent Adrienne Harris said in a news release.

“These actions demonstrate DFS’s unwavering commitment to holding insurers accountable and safeguarding consumers.”

According to the NYDFS, New York’s insurance law requires companies to report newly insured vehicles to the DMV within seven days of the policy’s effective date. In addition, most insurance terminations and suspensions must be reported within 30 days.

“These requirements are vital to ensuring law enforcement can identify uninsured vehicles, maintaining accurate DMV records, and protecting New Yorkers in the event of an accident,” the NYDFS said in the release.

The department said it handed down fines to insurers across the industry, while also issuing 37 consent orders.

The news comes three months after the NYDFS fined auto insurers Geico and Travelers a combined $11.3 million in penalties “for having poor data security,” which allowed the information of more than 120,000 New Yorkers to be compromised.

As PYMNTS has written, the NYDFS is one of the more powerful state financial regulators, as many of the country’s largest banks are headquartered within its jurisdiction.

Following President Trump’s victory last year, Harris told the Financial Times that the department could potentially pick up some of the regulatory slack if the new administration decided to take a more hands-off approach to regulation.

“We’re going to keep focusing on getting money back for consumers,” said Harris, whose department has hired hundreds of new staffers in recent years. Although she stressed that her office was “not ideological,” she added: “If there are new gaps that emerge because we don’t have a partner then we’ll work to fill those gaps as appropriate.”

Since then, the administration has tried to make good on its campaign promises, with plans to potentially combine some regulatory agencies while freezing enforcement activity at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).