Delaware Regulators Fine State Farm $150K Over Non-Renewal Notices

December 14, 2012Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticleComments

Delaware’s insurance department announced it has fined State Farm Fire and Casualty Company a $150,000 penalty for failing to include in some of its non-renewal notices a written explanation of the specific reasons for non-renewal.

The insurer has also been ordered to review its protocols regarding the application of underwriting guidelines for Delaware’s coastal region and adjust the language included in non-renewal notices.

Following State Farm’s decision to not renew 509 of its more than 127,000 property policies in Delaware, the insurance department conducted a market conduct examination to ensure the insurer was acting within Delaware insurance laws and regulations related to property insurance under Title 18 Insurance Code, Chapter 41.

The examination determined there was no unfair discrimination in State Farm’s underwriting decisions. However, the report did find that the non-renewal notices did not contain all the statutorily required information for consumers.

Delaware regulators said State Farm Fire and Casualty Company has also been ordered to suspend coastal non-renewals for a period of 3 years (starting November 1, 2012) and include additional information on future coastal non-renewal notices.

Under an agreement between the Delaware insurance department and State Farm, the company will:

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Paul Graham Wins $150K Hasselblad Award

©Paul Graham Pittsburgh, (Man Cutting Grass), 2004. From the series ‘a shimmer of possibility.’

British photographer Paul Graham has won the 2012 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, the foundation has announced. The award includes a $150,000 prize and an exhibition, which will open October 26 at the Gothenburg Museum of Art in Sweden.

In announcing the award, the foundation recognized Graham as “one of the most brilliant photographers of his generation” who has presented “an extremely focused body of work, at once perfectly coherent and never monotonous” during a career that has spanned nearly 40 years. The foundation also praised Graham for work that “makes tangible the insignificant traces of ‘the spirit of the times’ we do not normally see,” and it credited the photographer with developing “innovative forms of working with all aspects of photography.”

Graham has produced several noteworthy bodies of work, most recently his 2009 12-volume book titled A Shimmer of Possibility. Previous works include American Night (2003) and Beyond Caring (1985).

Graham explained to the Guardian in an interview last year, “”It has steadily become less important to me that the photographs are about something in the most obvious way. I am interested in more elusive and nebulous subject matter. The photography I most respect pulls something out of the ether of nothingness.”

In an interview with PDN, he observed, “The great photography which operates at the core of the medium

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