IIABNY Tells Insurers to Stop Sharing Agents' Work

The Board of Directors for the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of New York Inc. has called on insurance companies to stop giving customer data to insurance agents when a competing agent originally submitted the information.

IIABNY responded to recent soft market practices where companies, after unsuccessfully quoting an account with one agent, have given information about that account to a competing agent who may have better luck.

This inappropriate practice prompted IIABNY to broadcast an e-mail message July 30 to insurance company executives, informing them of a recent policy statement adopted by the IIABNY board. The statement declares, “The basic tenet of the independent agency system is that the agent/broker exclusively owns and controls its policyholder list, its expirations and the work product.”

The authors of the e-mail—IIABNY Chair Neal Sullivan, and the association's President and CEO Richard Poppa, —reminded insurers that this information-sharing procedure is "not a proper business practice.” The duo’s message asserted that the state’s oldest insurance producer trade association “stands firm in its defense of agents' and brokers' ownership of client and policyholder information.”

IIABNY’s officers and directors adopted the policy statement during its Annual Business Meeting in May.

To view the association’s Sharing of Agent/Broker Created Prospect Files policy statement online, visit http://ny.iiaa.org/Legislation/ProspectFilesPolicy_0508.pdf .