A Very Nice Meeting With the Illinois Dept. of Insurance

I got to meet Deputy Director Brett Gerger of the Illinois Department of Insurance last week, for a very cordial and wide-ranging meeting. We discussed some of our pending cases, where we've filed Consumer Complaints against some insurance companies who, in our opinion, have substantially overcharged some of our clients and don't want to return the money.

The Illinois Dept. has historically been very helpful in instances like that, but with recent personnel changes there we wanted to re-introduce ourselves to folks at the department who weren't so familiar with our long history of working with the Department on behalf of Illinois business.

The other thing we discussed was my long-tabled proposal to license people like me, people who do premium review and recovery work. I had made a proposal for such licensing some ten years ago but it went nowhere. But the current Deputy Director expressed an interest in looking at it, so I have forwarded my proposal and we shall see if anything comes of it.

This would address one of my long-standing concerns about this industry I helped to start, some thirty five years ago, the fact that there really is no regulatory oversight or control over this kind work. Anyone can set up shop on the internet and claim to be the world's greatest expert on Workers Comp audits, but sometimes a careless or inexperienced person can cause problems for a policyholder. And it's easy for an insurer to try and disregard the efforts of consultants like us, precisely because we don't fit into the old existing framework of agents or brokers. Being licensed by the state could change that, and help us better help employers who have been overcharged on their Workers Comp insurance.