Michigan insurance practice offers substantial and obvious rewards. Michigan has a large and diverse manufacturing, business, commercial, industrial, agricultural, and retail economy, with substantial insurable interests and insurance needs. National Association of Insurance Commissioners statistics rank Michigan eighth in the nation in health insurance and machinery insurance premiums, ninth in property and casualty and automobile insurance premiums, twelfth in accident and health premiums, and eleventh in total premiums. But to continue your rewarding Michigan insurance practice, you must successfully defend your Michigan Department of Insurance license against your current disciplinary charges.
You can do no better than to retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team for your best disciplinary outcome to Michigan Department of Insurance disciplinary charges. Our skilled and experienced attorneys are available in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Warren, Sterling Heights, Pontiac, Lansing, Dearborn, Ann Arbor, Livonia, Macomb, Troy, Westland, Farmington Hills, Birmingham, Jackson, Cadillac, Traverse City, Flint, Midland, Mt. Pleasant, and all other Michigan locations. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now for our preeminent defense representation. Read below how we can help you defend and defeat your Michigan Department of Insurance disciplinary charges.
Michigan Insurance Department Authority
Michigan Insurance Code Section 500.1201a prohibits anyone from selling, soliciting, or negotiating insurance in the state unless licensed by the Department of Insurance and Financial Services (DIFS). Section 500.1204 states the requirements to obtain a Department of Insurance license in Michigan. The Department of Insurance invites license applications while discouraging, investigating, and sanctioning unlicensed insurance practices. Michigan Insurance Code Section 500.1244 authorizes the Department of Insurance director to impose a fine of up to $5,000 for each violation of the Code, including unlicensed insurance practice, up to a maximum of $50,000. If you violate a Department of Insurance order to cease and desist unlicensed practice, the director may levy a $20,000 fine for each violation, up to a maximum of $100,000. You must not continue your Michigan insurance practice if your disciplinary charges result in the suspension or revocation of your insurance license. Don't risk unlicensed insurance practice. Let us help defend and defeat your Michigan Department of Insurance disciplinary charges.
Michigan Discipline Multistate Licensure Issues
Michigan Department of Insurance license discipline can result not only in the loss of your ability to engage in insurance business and transactions in Michigan but can also compromise insurance licenses you hold or hope to hold in other states. State insurance codes routinely construe license discipline in another state as a ground for discipline in the home state, as the Insurance Producer Model Act discussed below provides. While each state has its own insurance laws, insurance department, and insurance licensing mechanism, state insurance departments tend to respect and rely on the disciplinary decisions of other state insurance departments. Lose your insurance license in one state, and you may well lose your insurance license in another state, even if you did nothing wrong in the second state. The second state's insurance department may construe your discipline in the other state as an indication that you present a risk to insurance consumers in the second state. Your Michigan disciplinary charges thus carry potential nationwide implications for your insurance practice. Let us help you defend your Michigan disciplinary charges to preserve your ability to license and engage in the insurance business elsewhere.
Michigan Insurance Professional Misconduct
Insurance professionals are neither always saints nor often sinners. Insurance producers in Michigan and other states sometimes engage in sharp practices that warrant policing, punishment, correction, and protection. State legislatures enact their insurance codes in large part to protect insurance consumers and the insurance markets against dishonest, incompetent, untrustworthy, and irresponsible insurance producers. When they do so, they typically follow the Insurance Producers Model Act's disciplinary provisions. The Model Act includes the following common forms of insurance producer misconduct, each of which Michigan's insurance code also prohibits:
- license application fraud;
- license application misleading omissions;
- insurance statute or regulation violations;
- insurance standards violations;
- disobeying insurance director orders;
- ignoring insurance director subpoenas;
- converting customer funds;
- misrepresenting insurance contracts;
- insurance applications fraud;
- felony convictions;
- unfair trade practices;
- insurance transaction fraud;
- incompetent insurance practice;
- untrustworthy insurance practice;
- financially irresponsible insurance practice;
- dishonest insurance practice;
- another state's insurance license denial or discipline;
- forging signatures to insurance applications;
- forging signatures to other insurance transactions;
- insurance license exam cheating;
- insurance transactions with unlicensed individuals; and
- child support or state income tax nonpayment.
Michigan Insurance Department Disciplinary Grounds
Michigan Insurance Code Section 500.1239 lists the specific disciplinary grounds on which Michigan Department of Insurance officials may pursue disciplinary charges against you. Those grounds include all of the above Insurance Producers Model Act grounds, with modest reinterpretation, along with a few other disciplinary grounds. Section 500.1239's list of disciplinary grounds is significant to the evaluation and defense of your disciplinary charges. If your disciplinary charges are not among the grounds that Section 500.1239 lists, then the Department of Insurance officials may lack authority to pursue those charges. We can evaluate your disciplinary charges to determine whether you have that defense. The additional grounds that Michigan Insurance Code Section 500.1239 lists, beyond the Insurance Producers Model Act grounds, include:
- providing incorrect, misleading, incomplete, or materially untrue license application information;
- using unauthorized notes or other material to cheat on an insurance license exam;
- violating any regulation, subpoena, or order of the Michigan Department of Insurance director;
- violating any regulation, subpoena, or order of another state's insurance director; or
- failing to pay Michigan's business tax or an administrative or court order for payment of Michigan's business tax.
Nature of Michigan Insurance Department Charges
You should take the Michigan Department of Insurance disciplinary charges seriously. They threaten your license and insurance practice. But do not mistake disciplinary charges for discipline findings. Disciplinary charges only mean that Department officials believe that you may have violated insurance laws, rules, or standards. Disciplinary charges are allegations or accusations, not decisions or determinations. You have every right and opportunity to contest your disciplinary charges with our strategic and effective services. While your license's suspension or revocation is a possibility, license suspension or revocation may not be a likelihood or even a probability. Department disciplinary officials themselves may doubt whether they can prove the charges, especially when you have retained us to mount a full and fair defense to the charges under the available administrative procedures. We are often able to resolve disciplinary charges informally, before any hearing, through our communication, advocacy, and negotiation with disciplinary officials, with no sanction, and instead, only remedial measures that our client has already performed or can readily perform without adverse effect on professional practice.
Defenses to Michigan Insurance Department Charges
Effectively defending Michigan Insurance Department charges involves evaluating whether disciplinary officials have evidence to support each allegation. Are the allegations actually true? Our attorneys identify, gather, and evaluate the evidence, both from you and your contacts and from the Department investigators and officials. We then answer the charges and present and advocate your defenses according to what the evidence shows and does not show. Our analysis may enable us to assert any one or more of the following defenses on your behalf until we prevail:
- you simply did not do what the charges allege, whether or not the alleged events occurred at the hands of others;
- witnesses carelessly misidentify you for another agent out of lack of knowledge and observation;
- the complaining consumer has misidentified you out of delusion, poor recollection, or other mental incompetence, without cause;
- the charges wrongly infer and abjectly misstate your actual good intentions as if bad intentions, and therefore, misinterpret your actions with respect to the disputed transaction or transactions;
- the allegations are retaliatory for your whistleblowing, properly threatening to report others' misconduct;
- the root of the allegations is a competitor attempting to destroy your insurance practice;
- you acted on the reasonable advice and direction of superiors in novel and uncertain circumstances;
- you did as qualified and competent insurance professionals customarily do under similar circumstances;
- you caused no loss and created no risk of loss;
- emergency excused your conduct; or
- your good character and record and other circumstances demonstrate no need for sanction to protect consumers or the public.
Michigan Insurance Department Consumer Complaints
You've seen above the obligation of Michigan's Department of Insurance and Financial Services (DIFS) to protect consumers and the public against incompetent and untrustworthy insurance professionals. To carry out that end, the Department encourages consumers to use an online complaint portal to register complaints against insurance professionals. The Department makes it easy for literally anyone to complain against you. Who complains, whether your consumer customer or an insurance professional colleague or competitor, can make a difference to your outcome, depending on their interests, harm or loss, personal firsthand observations, knowledge and expertise, and credibility or lack thereof. Promptly retain us if you learn that someone suspects you of incompetence or wrongdoing and is preparing to report you to the Department of Insurance. Our attorneys may be able to dissuade the complainant based on sound, reliable, and convincing evidence of your innocent actions and intentions. We may, in other words, be able to resolve your matter even before it reaches Department officials.
Michigan Insurance Department Investigation
If, instead, you learn that a complaint has already reached the Michigan Department of Insurance and that the Department has assigned an investigator, let us help you respond to the investigation with the same purpose of heading off formal disciplinary charges. A complaint to the Department is not a disciplinary charge. Department officials must determine whether the complaint is credible, with supporting evidence. The Department assigns investigators to identify, gather, and evaluate incriminating and exonerating evidence. We can help you organize and present your defense evidence to the investigator in an accurate, truthful, and comprehensive fashion. Careless, incomplete, and inconsistent responses can lead to obstruction charges. Be wise, and be careful. Let us help you do so.
Michigan Insurance Commissioner Procedures
Michigan Insurance Code Section 500.1239, authorizing suspension or revocation of your license on disciplinary grounds, expressly refers to the state's Administrative Procedures Act of 1969 for procedures protecting the licensee or applicant. Michigan's Administrative Procedures Act, codified in Michigan Compiled Laws Sections 24.201 et seq., guarantees fair notice and a fair hearing before an independent administrative law judge in contested agency cases. Department of Insurance officials cannot simply declare you responsible for the charged wrongs. You get to retain us to give your account of the circumstances and raise your factual and legal defenses at a fair hearing.
Our Role Defending Disciplinary Charges
As indicated briefly above, we help you identify, gather, preserve, and present your defense evidence. We also promptly contact Michigan Department of Insurance disciplinary officials to notify the Department of our appearance on your behalf. Our notice immediately puts our attorneys' knowledge, skills, experience, reputation, and relationships to work for you, opening informal channels of communication through which we can advocate and negotiate for early voluntary dismissal of the charges.
Our Role in the Formal Hearing
As mentioned above, Michigan's Insurance Code and Administrative Procedures Act ensure that you have a fair hearing before an administrative law judge if a hearing is necessary to resolve the disciplinary charges. At the hearing, we can call you and your other witnesses to testify in your defense. We can also cross-examine the Department's adverse witnesses, challenging their observations and credibility. We also present your documentary evidence and prepare and file hearing briefs on legal issues to advocate for dismissal. Appeals to the state's circuit courts may also be available if you have already lost your hearing. Don't give up without retaining us to exhaust all avenues for relief. We know how to achieve your best possible outcome.
Michigan Insurance Department Discipline
Michigan Insurance Code Section 500.1239 expressly authorizes Department of Insurance disciplinary officials to “place on probation, suspend, or revoke an insurance producer's license,” levy a civil fine, or take any combination of actions the Insurance Code otherwise authorizes. Let us make your best case to mitigate any sanctions in favor of remedial measures that preserve your license.
Premier Insurance License Defense Attorneys
Retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team for your disciplinary defense. We have helped hundreds of insurance brokers, agents, adjusters, and other professionals across Michigan and nationwide. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now to preserve and protect your Michigan insurance practice.
