An insurance practice in North Carolina has to be among the most attractive of professional careers. You know how large in population, economically diverse, and rich in business, commercial, and residential properties the state's several metropolitan centers are. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners ranks North Carolina within or near the top ten of states nationally for homeowners insurance premiums, allied lines premiums, federal flood insurance premiums, property and casualty insurance premiums, and total premiums. But to continue your North Carolina insurance practice, you must maintain your North Carolina Department of Insurance license in good standing, against your current disciplinary charges.

Retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team for your best disciplinary outcome to North Carolina Department of Insurance disciplinary charges. Our skilled and experienced attorneys are available in Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, Durham, Winston-Salem, Fayetteville, Cary, Wilmington, High Point, Concord, Asheville, Greenville, Gastonia, Jacksonville, Apex, and all other North Carolina locations. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now for our premier defense services to preserve your North Carolina insurance license and practice. Consider below how we help you defend and defeat North Carolina Department of Insurance disciplinary charges.

North Carolina Insurance Department Authority

North Carolina Insurance Code Section 58-33-5 expressly states that a “person shall not sell, solicit, or negotiate insurance in this State for any kind of insurance unless the person is licensed” for those insurance lines. North Carolina Insurance Code Section 58-33-26 likewise expressly prohibits any unlicensed individual from engaging in insurance practice within the state's borders. You must retain your North Carolina Department of Insurance license in good standing to continue your current North Carolina insurance business. Other Insurance Code sections authorize severe penalties for unlicensed insurance practice. For instance, Section 58-33-95 makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor to unknowingly sell insurance without authorization, punishable by up to 120 days in jail and a discretionary fine, and a Class H felony, punishable by up to more than one year imprisonment, for knowingly doing so. If you lose your North Carolina insurance license to disciplinary charges, you won't continue to practice insurance in the state. Let us help you fight your disciplinary charges.

North Carolina Discipline Multistate Licensure Issues

If you suffer from the North Carolina Department of Insurance license discipline, the impact of that discipline can extend well beyond the State of North Carolina. The North Carolina Department of Insurance and other state insurance departments share their disciplinary information. Discipline in one state can be grounds for discipline in another state under state insurance codes. North Carolina Insurance Code Section 58-33-46, for instance, expressly states that violating the insurance laws of another state is grounds for license discipline in North Carolina. As shown below, that statutory term comes from the Insurance Producer Model Act, followed in many other states. Your North Carolina license discipline may mean that you will lose licenses you hold in other states or that you will be unable to qualify for a new license in another state. In short, your North Carolina disciplinary proceeding has national insurance practice implications. Let us help you fight your disciplinary charges here and now so that they do not foreclose opportunities elsewhere later.

North Carolina Insurance Professional Misconduct

Insurance professionals are generally no more or less prone to professional misconduct violations than professionals in other fields. All professions have rare bad actors; all professions also have good actors who take rare bad actions. State legislatures, like the North Carolina legislature, thus routinely adopt insurance laws regulating insurance professionals, including the disciplinary provisions of the Insurance Producers Model Act. The Model Act lists the following examples of insurance producer misconduct, each of which subject the insurance professional to license discipline:

license application fraudulent statements;
license application misleading omissions;
insurance law or regulation violations;
violations of insurance standards;
disobeying insurance department orders;
refusing to comply with insurance department subpoenas;
misappropriating customer property;
misrepresenting insurance coverage;
false insurance applications;
conviction of felony crimes;
unfair trade practices in insurance practice;
fraud in insurance transactions;
incompetent or untrustworthy insurance practices;
financially irresponsible or dishonest insurance practices;
denial or discipline of another state's insurance license;
forging insurance applications or other transactions;
cheating on insurance license exams;
insurance business with unlicensed individuals; and
failing to pay child support or state income taxes.

North Carolina Insurance Department Disciplinary Grounds

North Carolina Insurance Code Section 58-33-46 lists the specific grounds on which the North Carolina Department of Insurance may discipline your license. Those grounds include each of the above provisions of the Insurance Producers Model Act plus a handful of other provisions outside of the Model Act. That list of statutory grounds for your license discipline is important. North Carolina Department of Insurance disciplinary officials cannot simply make up disciplinary charges. Instead, they must rely on their statutory authority to discipline, which is limited to the enumerated grounds. We can compare your disciplinary charges to Section 58-33-46's enumerated grounds to raise any available defense that Department of Insurance officials lack authority for your charges. The additional grounds that Section 58-33-46 lists outside of the above Model Act provisions include:

willfully failing to timely notify the Department of Insurance of your filing of a bankruptcy petition;
soliciting, selling, or negotiating insurance for an unauthorized insurer;
willfully over-insuring property; and
any grounds for denying an initial license, including prior unlicensed or unauthorized practice or failure to pass a required examination.

Notice of North Carolina Insurance Department Charges

North Carolina Department of Insurance disciplinary charges can surely concern or even frighten and discourage an insurance broker, agent, or adjuster. After all, disciplinary charges put the insurance producer's practice, reputation, and professional relationships at risk. But keep in mind that disciplinary charges are allegations, not findings. Your notice of charges may make it sound like the disciplinary officials have you dead to rights, when to the contrary, they may know that they lack credible evidence for some or all of their charges. Do not assume that you will probably or must suffer disciplinary sanctions simply because officials serve you with a detailed and accusatory notice. And do not ignore or minimize the charges. Instead, promptly retain us to defend your disciplinary charges, putting your best defense forward for the best possible outcome.

Defenses to North Carolina Insurance Department Charges

When you retain us, we will promptly work with you and others to investigate your defenses to the disciplinary charges, while evaluating and preparing your answer to the charges. Depending on your defense evidence and circumstances, our answer may be able to raise any one or more of the following potential defenses:

you have no knowledge or information of the alleged wrongs other than that you know that you did not commit them;
your accusers have mistakenly or purposely misidentified you for misconduct that others committed;
the charges incorrectly presume and grossly misstate your intentions;
the charges grossly misinterpret your actual actions with respect to the disputed transaction or transactions;
others have made retaliatory false allegations against you for your refusal to engage in misconduct or your threatening to report misconduct;
the charge's false allegations involve a competitor's attempt to steal your insurance practice by ruining your reputation;
you acted within a safe harbor created by the reasonable advice or direction of others with greater expertise as to the proper interpretation of the applicable rules and standards in novel or ambiguous circumstances;
your actions met the standards of customary among qualified and competent insurance professionals acting under similar circumstances;
your actions caused no loss and created no risk of loss;
you acted under unforeseeable extraordinary circumstances excusing your conduct; or
your unblemished record of sound insurance practice warrants only remedial measures rather than punitive sanctions.

North Carolina Insurance Consumer Complaints

The North Carolina Department of Insurance maintains an online complaint portal that consumers can use to complain against insurance brokers, agents, and adjusters. The complaint portal carries out the Department of Insurance's duty under North Carolina Insurance Code Section 58-33-46 to discipline licensees for misconduct. Anyone may register a complaint against you, but your customers and clients are likely complainants, especially if they have suffered some loss relating to a transaction you facilitated. Retain us if your customers or clients communicate to you that they have sufficient concern over your performance and that they are considering making a Department of Insurance complaint. We may be able to present your explanation and documentation in a sufficiently accurate, clear, comprehensive, and convincing manner to appropriately discourage a complaint. Better to head off a baseless complaint than to have to answer baseless disciplinary charges.

Responding to Insurance Department Investigation

Retain us the moment you learn of a North Carolina Department of Insurance investigation against you. Do not wait for formal disciplinary charges. We may be able to communicate your explanation to the investigator and share your documentation with the investigator in a sufficiently clear, reliable, and convincing fashion to lead the investigator to recommend the complaint's dismissal before formal charges. We can also help you ensure that your responses to the investigator are accurate, truthful, and complete so that you do not face obstruction charges for careless or incomplete responses.

North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Procedures

North Carolina Insurance Code Section 58-33-46 authorizing discipline on specific grounds expressly incorporates the administrative hearing rules of the state's Administrative Procedure Act, codified in Article 3A of Chapter 150B of the North Carolina General Statutes. Those administrative protections satisfy your constitutional due process right to fair notice of the charges and a fair hearing before an impartial decision maker.

Our Role Defending North Carolina Insurance Department Charges

When you retain us to defend your disciplinary charges, we notify the North Carolina Department of Insurance disciplinary officials to communicate with us. Our appearance on your behalf gives us the opportunity to advocate and negotiate both formally at the hearing and informally in pre-hearing conferences and calls. Through our informal communications, we may be able to negotiate voluntary dismissal of the charges, either on the basis of our presentation of your exonerating evidence or based on our offer of remedial measures satisfactory to address the officials' disciplinary concerns.

Our Role in the Formal Hearing

If your matter proceeds to a formal hearing, North Carolina's Administrative Procedure Act gives you the right to have us conduct your hearing defense on your behalf. We can call you and your other defense witnesses for our direct examination, cross-examine the Department's adverse witnesses, and present and challenge documentary evidence. If you have already lost your formal hearing, we can take your available administrative appeals and, if necessary, also seek civil court review and relief. Let us exhaust your avenues for relief until you achieve your best possible disciplinary outcome.

North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Discipline

North Carolina Insurance Code Section 58-33-46 authorizing discipline on specific grounds also authorizes disciplinary sanctions. Section 58-33-46 gives Department of Insurance disciplinary officials the discretion to impose probation, suspension, or revocation. Officials thus have the express and implied authority to fashion relief short of the harsh sanctions of license suspension or revocation. You may be able to accept license probation without undue impact on your insurance practice or professional reputation and relationships. Officials may condition probation on a license limitation or on remedial measures like additional training or education, monitoring, supervision, or mentoring. Let us put forward your best case to mitigate sanctions. We may be able to avoid all sanctions in favor of purely remedial measures without probation.

Premier Insurance License Defense Attorneys

If you face the North Carolina Department of Insurance license discipline, your best move is to retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team. Our attorneys have helped hundreds of insurance brokers, agents, adjusters, and other professionals across North Carolina and nationwide in defending disciplinary charges. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now to preserve and protect your North Carolina insurance license and practice.

North Carolina Insurance Professional License Defense