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- <text id=89TT2323>
- <title>
- Sep. 04, 1989: Business Notes:Auto Insurance
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Sep. 04, 1989 Rock Rolls On:Rolling Stones
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- BUSINESS, Page 53
- Business Notes
- AUTO INSURANCE
- Hey, Where's My Refund
- </hdr><body>
- <p> California motorists have been looking forward to
- auto-insurance refunds since November, when voters passed an
- initiative calling for a 20% cut in premiums for property and
- casualty coverage. But their anticipation turned to anger last
- week, when State Insurance Commissioner Roxani Gillespie
- declared that most Californians are "not going to get lower
- auto-insurance rates" as a result of the initiative.
- </p>
- <p> The hitch is a May decision by the state supreme court,
- which upheld the initiative but ruled that insurance companies
- are entitled to "a fair and reasonable" profit. Most of the
- state's insurance firms maintained that they should be exempted
- on those grounds. After reviewing their profit statements,
- Gillespie said she found only 13 companies profitable enough to
- warrant rate rollbacks. She announced hearings to examine the
- exemption claims of 34 more firms, but further outraged critics
- by declaring that evaluations of more than 200 other companies
- could take as long as ten years to complete.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-