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Florida Lifts Ban On Allstate Selling New Insurance Policies

POSTED: Friday, May 16, 2008

Allstate Corp.'s insurance companies can resume selling new car insurance and other policies in Florida, the state's insurance regulator said Friday.

Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty lifted the suspension because he said Allstate has turned over documents that regulators demanded along with an affidavit that everything being sought was included.

The state had said since January that the company hadn't sufficiently complied with subpoenas seeking information about how Allstate sets homeowners insurance rates. McCarty moved then to suspend the company, but it appealed. An appeals court this week upheld the suspension and it went into effect Wednesday.

Allstate spokesman Adam Shores said the company was telling agents they could immediately begin selling policies again and that Allstate officials were pleased at the resolution of the dispute.

"This allows us to resume offering insurance protection to Floridians," said Shores. "We're looking forward to having a continuous dialogue with the (state Office of Insurance Regulation) and other leaders about solutions to the property insurance market."

It's not clear how much business Allstate might have lost by being unable to sell for a little more than two days. But the company is the second-largest auto insurer in Florida, with about 1.7 million policies in force. The existing policies weren't affected by regulators' actions.

McCarty made it clear that to be able to continue to do business, the company must keep cooperating.

"Failure to cooperate with necessary, ongoing requests from the office will result in an immediate resumption of the suspension," McCarty said in a statement.

Officials said the Northbrook, Ill.-based company has produced more than 825,000 pages of documents -- most of them since the agency moved to suspend the company Jan. 17.

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