Arizona makes a great state in which to pursue an insurance business. National Association of Insurance Commissioners data indicates a substantial growth, approaching 100%, in total premiums written in the state over a little more than the past decade. The same data shows Arizona ranking ninth nationally in total domestic and foreign licensed insurers, sixth nationally in title premiums, ninth in aircraft premiums, thirteenth in automobile premiums, and sixteenth in risk retention group premiums. You have plenty of business insurance to pursue while you enjoy the fabulous Arizona scenery, recreation, arts, culture, and weather. However, you will lose your Arizona insurance practice if you lose your Arizona Department of Insurance license due to disciplinary charges.
Your best move if you face Arizona Department of Insurance disciplinary charges is to retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team. Our highly qualified attorneys are available in Phoenix, Tucson, Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, Glendale, Scottsdale, Peoria, Tempe, Surprise, San Tan Valley, Goodyear, Yuma, Buckeye, Avondale, Flagstaff, and all other Arizona locations. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now for our skilled and experienced representation. Consider the following Arizona insurance license information, along with how we may be able to help defend and defeat your disciplinary charges.
Arizona Insurance Department Licensing Authority
You must deal with the Arizona Department of Insurance in your insurance license disciplinary proceeding. The Arizona Department of Insurance has the state's insurance license authority. Article III of Arizona Revised Statutes Title 20 sets forth the state's requirements for an insurance license. Section 20-282 of Article III prohibits the transaction of any insurance business in the state without an Arizona Department of Insurance license. Section 20-292 authorizes Arizona Department of Insurance officials to obtain a Maricopa County court injunction against unlicensed insurance practice, enforceable with contempt fines and incarceration. If you continue your insurance practice on a suspended or revoked license, the Department of Insurance can not only enjoin and punish your unlicensed practice but also use your unlicensed practice to deny you any future license reinstatement. Don't ignore or minimize the potential impact of your Arizona Department of Insurance disciplinary charges. Instead, get our help defending and defeating the charges.
Arizona Discipline Multistate Licensure Issues
If you suffer discipline out of your current Arizona Department of Insurance disciplinary proceeding, that discipline could have impacts well beyond Arizona's borders. If you hold an insurance license in another state, state insurance acts, like Section 20-295 of Arizona's insurance laws, routinely authorize license suspension and revocation for the same discipline in another state. Discipline in Arizona likely means discipline wherever else you hold an insurance license. If you suffer Arizona license discipline, that discipline may also prevent you from obtaining an insurance license in another state. Discipline in one state is routinely grounds to deny a license in another state, as Section 20-295 of Arizona's insurance laws also provides. The stakes of your Arizona license proceeding are high. Get our skilled and experienced representation for your best possible licensing outcome.
Arizona Insurance Professional Misconduct
No insurance producer plans to lose an insurance license. Insurance agents, brokers, and adjusters are routinely circumspect as to their statutory and regulatory duties. You know the risks of losing your license, incurring civil liability, and losing employment if you start intentionally violating insurance laws and standards. But you still face disciplinary risks. The insurance business can be extraordinarily complex, littered with gray areas where the rules and conventions may not be clear and where the incentives align to pursue additional business. Your insurance customers also have enormous financial stakes. When they suffer substantial losses, they'll be looking for someone else to blame, including potentially their insurance agent. Insurance agents' disciplinary charges are, therefore, unfortunately, relatively common. The Insurance Producers Model Act lists these common forms of insurance agent misconduct for which you could suffer Arizona Department of Insurance discipline:
- felony conviction for crimes related or unrelated to insurance practice;
- misrepresenting your education, experience, criminal history, or other qualifications when securing your insurance license;
- cheating on the insurance licensing exam by using unauthorized materials or devices, getting unauthorized assistance, or by other means;
- violating insurance agent customs, conventions, and standards established by statute, rule, or professional code of ethics;
- violating insurance commissioner rules, orders, subpoenas, or the terms of a disciplinary sanction;
- misappropriating or withholding customer property, money, rights, or opportunities;
- defrauding a customer as to the terms or conditions of an insurance policy or coverages;
- falsifying insurance applications or forging signatures on applications or other transaction documents;
- restraints of trade or unfair competition in the insurance business;
- dishonest or incompetent insurance practices;
- license discipline by a board in another state or jurisdiction;
- facilitating unauthorized insurance business with an unlicensed individual;
- violating court orders for child support; or
- failing to pay state income taxes.
Arizona Insurance Department Disciplinary Grounds
Arizona's insurance laws authorize discipline for each of the above grounds that the Insurance Producers Model Act lists. Section 20-295 of the Arizona insurance laws closely tracks the Model Act, repeating the above provisions with modest differences. Section 20-295 adds a prohibition involving procuring a license principally to insure a personal interest or an interest held by a family member, employer, or entity in which the licensee holds an interest. The Arizona Department of Insurance wants you in the insurance business not just for your own interests, to avoid paying another insurance agent or broker, and to reduce personal premium costs, but to serve the insurance needs of others. We can help you evaluate your Arizona Department of Insurance disciplinary charges against Section 20-295's stated disciplinary grounds to raise any available defense that your charges exceed the Department's disciplinary authority.
Nature of Arizona Insurance Department Charges
On one hand, you must not take your Arizona Department of Insurance disciplinary charges lightly. You have far too much at stake to do so. Yet, on the other hand, for your best disciplinary outcome, you need to understand that your disciplinary charges do not necessarily mean that Department officials have you dead to rights. They may instead be on a proverbial fishing expedition without evidentiary support for speculative allegations. They may be appeasing a complaining witness whose account they already doubt. They may be expecting you to come forward with a credible and well-documented explanation, absolving you of the disciplinary allegations. Let us help you evaluate, defend, and defeat your Arizona Department of Insurance disciplinary charges. Your discipline is not a foregone conclusion. You may have perfectly legitimate and provable defenses.
Defenses to Arizona Insurance Department Charges
Our attorneys may raise any number of available factual and legal defenses to your Arizona Department of Insurance disciplinary charges. Your defenses may include that the complaining witnesses have no first-hand observations of the wrongs they allege. We may be able to show that the complaining witnesses are guessing, speculating, and conjecturing. What disciplinary officials claim to be incriminating evidence may instead be unreliable hearsay. Complaining witnesses may have mistakenly misidentified you. They may alternatively be coercing you, driving you out of an insurance business they intend to take over, or covering their own wrong. A customer may be trying to induce you or your errors and omissions insurer to pay for a loss for which you were not responsible.
Other potential defenses include that although your actions appear suspicious, you had sound and innocent reasons for undertaking them, consistent with insurance standards. We may be able to use a consulting insurance witness to prove that your actions met all insurance customs, conventions, laws, rules, regulations, and standards under the peculiar circumstances you were facing. We may alternatively be able to show that you reasonably relied on the sound advice of a supervisor or other knowledgeable insurance professional on a debatable matter. We may also be able to show that your actions, even if arguably outside of standards, caused no harm or loss and instead prevented customer or public loss. You may alternatively have acted under emergency conditions that altered the customary standards. Your clean record of providing valuable insurance services may also mitigate any potential sanction. You can trust us to raise your best available defenses.
Responding to Arizona Insurance Investigation
If you learn from a customer or colleague that the Arizona Department of Insurance has you under investigation for suspected misconduct, but you have not yet received formal notice of Department disciplinary charges, your best move is to promptly retain us. Department investigators may interview everyone else involved in the matter before they contact you, by which time they may have made up their minds about the matter. We may be able to contact the Department investigator to help you supply your explanation and exonerating evidence in a truthful, accurate, comprehensive, complete, and convincing manner before the investigation congeals into disciplinary charges. We may, in other words, be able to help you head off formal disciplinary charges by advocating and even negotiating with the Department investigator and other Department officials.
Responding to Arizona Customer Concerns
If complaints have not yet reached the Arizona Department of Insurance, we may be able to sensitively and diplomatically communicate with the customer, colleague, or competitor whom you learn has serious enough concerns over your suspected misconduct to soon report you to the Department for investigation. We may be able to make a presentation to your concerned customer or insurance professional, showing that you violated no standard. They may have a wrong or incomplete view of what you did or why you did it. But don't try this approach on your own in a way that suggests that you are coercing a witness and interfering with an investigation or complaint process. Let us help so that you do not make a difficult situation worse.
Our Role Defending Arizona Disciplinary Charges
The prior section shows defenses we may be able to raise. This section addresses how we go about raising those defenses. Our attorneys first investigate your Arizona Department of Insurance disciplinary charges, interviewing witnesses and securing and examining records. We can also notify Department officials of our appearance on your behalf, opening lines of communication for an early voluntary exchange of information and remedial resolution. Not every charge must proceed to a formal hearing. We may be able to promptly settle your matter without sanction for measures you've already undertaken or can undertake at little to no burden, loss, or cost. If your matter instead proceeds on formal charges, we can answer the disciplinary charges, raising your defenses while invoking the following protective procedures.
Arizona Insurance Department Procedures
You generally have a constitutional right to a hearing before an impartial decision-maker, where we can present your defense witnesses and exhibits while challenging the Department's adverse witnesses and other incriminating evidence. Section 20-295 of the Arizona insurance laws authorizing discipline recognizes your constitutional due process right by requiring Department officials to offer you a hearing under the state's administrative procedures for contested cases. Our conduct of the hearing may well carry the day, resulting in the dismissal of the disciplinary charges. If, instead, you have already lost your hearing, we can take the appeals and obtain the judicial review available under the same protective procedures. Alternative special relief may also be available. Let us help you exhaust your administrative remedies until we obtain your best possible outcome.
Premier Arizona Insurance License Defense
If you face Arizona Department of Insurance disciplinary charges, your best move is to retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team for your defense. We are available anywhere you are located in Arizona. Our attorneys have helped hundreds of insurance brokers, agents, adjusters, and other professionals across Arizona and nationwide defend disciplinary charges of all kinds. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now for the highly qualified representation you need to protect your Arizona insurance license, reputation, relationships, and business.
