Public Citizen Calls on State Insurance Commissioners to Sign Ethics Pledge
Pledge is part of effort to end revolving door between industry and regulators which poses major conflicts of interest
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. — Outside of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ (NAIC) Summer 2025 National Meeting, activists from Public Citizen called on state insurance commissioners to stop enabling climate profiteering by signing anti-corruption pledges and delivered a petition with over 4,300 signatures calling for an increase transparency, elimination of conflicts of interest, and shutting the revolving door of commissioners joining the industry.
The action, which singled out elected and appointed insurance commissioners from across the country, featured a jumbo-sized pen and signs calling on commissioners to adopt ethics policies intended to protect insurance rate payers in their states.
“Americans buy insurance to protect themselves against threats to the building blocks of their wellbeing,” said Rick Morris, insurance campaigner with Public Citizen’s Climate Program. “Climate change is a fundamental threat to peoples’ homes and health. While insurance companies are still making money in 90% of US zip codes, instead of using their strong financial standing to help people in their time of need, they have used climate change as cover to justify withdrawing coverage and spiking rates. As a result, insurance companies saw their most profitable year in history and outrageous CEO pay. There’s a word for this: profiteering. And there’s a solution to this: regulation.”
State insurance commissioners shape the rules governing trillions of dollars in insurance policies, with direct impacts on Americans’ homes, health, and financial futures. Yet, these commissioners find themselves entangled in a web of industry lobbyists happy to offer lavish dinners and free trips to conferences in places like Jackson Hole, Wyoming. All too often, commissioners leave their public roles to enter the insurance industry, creating a revolving door between regulators and an industry profiteering off of a crisis driven by climate change.
“Between the revolving door among the insurance industry and commissioner offices, lavish gifts and trips, and suspicious campaign finance, this body has been captured by the industry it is supposed to regulate,” said Morris. “When the fox guards the henhouse, the hens get eaten. At a time when more people are struggling to make ends meet, this is unacceptable.”
The protest in front of the NAIC conference comes weeks after a report from Public Citizen and Revolving Door Project found that, among the big U.S. property and casualty insurers that publicly report executive compensation, C-suite pay is rising fast. At nine of the top 25 homeowners insurance writers—comprising 24% of the market—42 executives took home a collective $310 million last year, up 21% from 2022. That’s more than $7 million per executive on average.
In January, the NAIC called on Congress to abolish the small Federal Insurance Office in the Treasury Department, a move that will stymie data collection regarding an industry that is in crisis due to climate change.
“People rely on their homes and their health to build wealth and weather financial storms,” concluded Morris. “As climate change threatens people’s homes and livelihoods throughout the country, insurers are hoarding profits at our expense. And the industry wants to keep the public oblivious to the major disruptions rocking the insurance industry. Regulators, who should be watching out for ratepayers across the country, need to ensure they are putting the public ahead of the perks they receive from the industry.”
See photos from the event here.
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