Legislature Gives Calif. Regulator Tool to Fight Insurance Fraud

The California Legislature has approved a bill to allow the Department of Insurance to help better monitor insurance fraud trends.

To help prevent, detect and investigate insurance fraud, existing law requires insurers to disclose to an authorized governmental agency information relative to incidents of workers’ compensation fraud.

If SB 156 is signed by the governor, it would authorize the DOI to convene meetings with insurance companies to discuss specific information concerning suspected, anticipated, or completed acts of insurance fraud and would protect a person sharing information pursuant to that authorization from civil liability for libel, slande or any other relevant cause of action, according to the bill text.