Washington Insurance Commissioner Patty Kuderer has fined USAA Casualty Insurance Co. and Allstate Vehicle and Property Insurance Co. a combined $230,000 for violations involving claims handling and, in Allstate’s case, premium transparency requirements.
USAA was fined $140,000 following a review of its auto claims practices. The Washington Office of the Insurance Commissioner (OIC) began reviewing claims after identifying 445 consumer complaints involving USAA between 2019 and 2024.
The OIC examined 125 complaints filed from January 2023 through April 2024 and identified potential violations involving 31 auto claims. USAA confirmed 19 violations, according to the regulator.
The violations included delays in responding to policyholders, failure to investigate claims within required timeframes, denying claims without a reasonable investigation and failing to include applicable taxes and fees in a settlement.
Following an OIC inquiry into total-loss settlements, USAA reviewed its records and issued additional payments on 158 claims totaling $88,241. The insurer also reported that it corrected the underlying issue.
Allstate was separately fined $90,000 after the OIC reviewed its claims practices in response to consumer complaints. Regulators examined 108 claims from a database of 3,040 and found 16 violations involving nine claims.
Those violations included failure to use reasonable claims processing and payment standards, delays in responding to consumers and completing investigations, and one instance in which the OIC said the insurer misrepresented important facts when issuing a payment substantially below its own estimate.
The OIC also found that Allstate failed to include required premium-change transparency language on declarations for 86,705 homeowners policies issued between April 15, 2024, and April 22, 2025. Of those policies, 86,136 had a premium increase at renewal.
“We take our role as a consumer protection agency seriously,” Kuderer said, adding that enforcement actions are intended to hold insurers accountable for their obligations to policyholders.
Washington has also updated its minimum claims-handling standards, with the revised rules scheduled to take effect Oct. 18. According to the OIC, the agency issued $495,200 in fines for insurance-law violations from April through August.
Information for this article was provided by Office of the Insurance Commissioner Washington State. Views and claims expressed in this article are those of the source company and do not necessarily reflect the views of AgencyEquity.com. This article may have been edited with the help of AI.
