Opponents of using credit scores to set insurance premiums lost a battle to get House Bill 2513 out of committee this week in the Legislature.
Sponsored by Rep. Sharon Nelson (D-Maury Island), the bill would have banned the use of credit scores to set insurance rates, a practice the industry says is a good predictor of risk but critics argue is discriminatory to minorities and unwarranted in tough economic times.
The bill was set for a vote Feb. 2 in the House Committee on Financial Institutions & Insurance, but at the start of the meeting, committee members immediately went into a closed caucus. When they finished, Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos (D-Seattle) put forward a substitute bill that, instead of prohibiting insurance credit scoring, would have commissioned a study on the effects of the practice. The study, which the committee rejected, would have been paid for by charging insurance companies a 10-cent fee on driving abstracts or data that insurers purchase from the state.
The original bill's duplicate, Senate Bill 6252, was up for a vote at press time in the Committee on Labor and Commerce & Consumer Protection. Committee chair Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D - Seattle) expects the prohibition to pass without significant amendments. "I predict it will get through," she says.
--Cydney Gillis