I’ve blogged before about Allstate’s contempt of court in refusing to disclose thousands of pages of documents about its work with McKinsey & Company, the business consulting giant. McKinsey got together with Allstate in the mid-90s to implement a system that systematically violates well established principles of insurance law for the purpose of taking money owed to insureds and putting it into the pockets of Allstate shareholders and senior executives.

There is no question about Allstate’s bad acts. This information is based on first hand knowledge provided by David Berardinelli after he spent two years reviewing over 12,000 pages of documents about the program. You can find a Business Week article from a couple of years ago detailing more about Berardinelli and the McKinsey documents here.

Since Berardinelli’s intensive research, Allstate has done everything it could to stop him from disclosing anything about the material in the McKinsey documents and to prevent the disclosure of the documents themselves. Allstate continues to accrue $25,000 per day penalty imposed by the Missouri state courts as I blogged about last month.

The most recent action taken against the insurance giant is from the Florida Insurance Commissioner. He has suspended Allstate from writing new policies in that state due, in part, to Allstate’s refusal to turn over the McKinsey documents. Still, Allstate persists in stonewalling.  It seeks review of the Florida Insurance Commissioner's suspension and the matter looks far from being resolved.  For now, a Florida state appeals court has blocked the Insurance Commissioner's suspension.  Allstate's unscrupulous business practices are on the verge of being exposed and it is desperately doing all it can to prevent their disclosure. But it’s just a matter of time.

Berardinelli’s working on a book for public consumption detailing the ugly details of Allstate’s entire business strategy which it has carried on for over a decade and continues now.  Hopefully this information will make a few folks rethink whether they are really in good hands with Allstate. 

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Denise H 11/17/2008 01:47 PM
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