News Archive

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Washington state Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler on Wednesday sent a letter to insurers (PDF 173.91KB) urging them to consider loosening personal property claim filing requirements for victims of last summer’s Spokane County wildfires.

Insurance companies typically require policyholders to provide a full, itemized list of all personal property lost in the inciting incident to settle a claim. 

In the letter, Kreidler asked insurers to adjust those requirements and allow for the grouping of like items for consideration — for example, listing “…

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Washington state Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler fined New York Life Insurance Company $46,328 (fortress.wa.gov) in January for failing to make sure its insurance producers were up to date on their training requirements. 

Insurance agents are required to receive specific long-term care training and continuing education to ensure they have the knowledge to properly sell long-term care products. The legislature requires insurers to share in the responsibility through an annual education verification process.

New York Life Insurance failed to…

SPOKANE, Wash. — The Washington state Office of the Insurance Commissioner will have a representative on hand at two Disaster Recovery Centers in the Spokane area this week to help answer insurance questions from people impacted by the wildfires in Eastern Washington in August. 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced February 20 (www.fema.gov) that individual assistance was available for residents in Spokane County affected by the Gray and Oregon Road wildfires that occurred between August 18 and 25, 2023. 

The fires, combined, destroyed 369 homes,…

OLYMPIA, Wash. — A small volunteer effort that started in Mount Vernon and grew into one of the nation’s most popular senior customer assistance programs is celebrating 45 years of work.

The Statewide Health Insurance Benefits Advisors (SHIBA) program, part of the Office of the Insurance Commissioner (OIC), has spent more than 40 years providing hundreds of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries in Washington state with free, unbiased and confidential counseling services. 

SHIBA helps people in every corner of the state with questions about enrolling in Medicare,…