Tennessee Insurance Professional License Defense

Tennessee is an attractive state in which to establish and grow an insurance business. It's not just that Tennessee has a temperate climate, a beautiful natural environment, and wonderful cities and towns with substantial arts, entertainment, and social and cultural opportunities. National Association of Insurance Commissioners data also ranks Tennessee fifteenth nationally in total domestic and foreign licensed insurers, making the state a substantial insurance market. The same data ranks Tennessee sixth nationally in earthquake premiums, fifteenth nationally in fire premiums, and seventeenth nationally in health and property and casualty premiums while also indicating over 60% premium growth in a little more than the past decade.

Yet Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance license disciplinary charges can lead to the loss of your license and, with it, the loss of your insurance practice, income, and business. If you face Tennessee insurance license disciplinary charges, retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team for your best disciplinary outcome. Our skilled and experienced attorneys are available in Nashville, Davidson, Memphis, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Clarksville, Murfreesboro, Franklin, Johnson City, Jackson, Hendersonville, Bartlett, Kingsport, Smyrna, Spring Hill, Collierville, Cleveland, Gallatin, Brentwood, Columbia, Germantown, and all other Tennessee locations. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now for our highly qualified representation. The following Tennessee insurance license discipline information, suggesting how we may be able to go about defending and defeating your charges, will give you a head start on our strategic and effective license defense.

Tennessee Insurance Department Licensing Authority

The Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance has state legislative authority to pursue your insurance license discipline. Section 56-1-201 of the Tennessee Insurance Law creates the Department of Commerce and Insurance to regulate insurance practice in the state. Section 56-6-103 of the Tennessee Insurance Producer Licensing Act then requires anyone conducting insurance business in the state to obtain a Department of Commerce and Insurance license. Section 56-6-112 of the same Insurance Producer Licensing Act authorizes the Department of Commerce and Insurance to impose civil penalties of $1,000 for each violation of the license requirement, up to an aggregate limit of $100,000. Court injunctions against unlicensed practice, enforceable with contempt fines and incarceration, are also available. You must not continue your Tennessee insurance business if you lose your license to Department of Commerce and Insurance disciplinary charges. Don't ignore or minimize the charges. Instead, let us help defend and defeat them.

Tennessee Discipline Multistate Licensure Issues

Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance license discipline could affect your ability to hold a license or gain a new license in other states, anywhere across the country. Revocation of an insurance license in another state is grounds to revoke your Tennessee insurance license under the Tennessee Insurance Producer Licensing Act Section 56-6-112. The Insurance Producers Model Act, after which Tennessee patterns Section 56-6-112, has the same provision. Every state adopting the Model Act will likewise have the authority to revoke your insurance license in that state if you lose your Tennessee license to discipline. In short, your Tennessee license proceeding has nationwide implications, not just affecting your Tennessee insurance business. Don't risk those nationwide impacts. Get our help defending your Tennessee disciplinary charges.

Tennessee Insurance Producer Misconduct Risks

You likely do everything you reasonably can to minimize your risk of professional misconduct, followed by Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance disciplinary charges. But as hard as you try to avoid discipline, insurance practice is just so complex, technical, high risk, high loss, and high reward that disciplinary charges may still come, inviting professional disaster. When customers suffer insurable but uninsured losses, they can go looking for an agent to blame. Agents can face gray areas where the rules and standards don't seem so clear and where the temptations to proceed out of one's interest or a customer's interest are great. Competitors can suspect unfair trade practices and unfair competition or simply covet your thriving insurance business, resulting in unexpected and undeserved disciplinary charges. Let us help if you face a false, unfair, exaggerated, or surprising disciplinary charge.

Tennessee Insurance Producer Misconduct Types

As briefly referenced above, insurance commissioners nationwide developed an Insurance Producers Model Act, after which many states, including Tennessee, patterned their disciplinary provisions. The Insurance Producers Model Act lists these for which Tennessee's Insurance Producer Licensing Act authorizes discipline:

Misconduct Related to Insurance Producer Fitness

  • felony conviction for crimes either related or unrelated to insurance practice;
  • misrepresenting one's mental or physical fitness, education, work experience, criminal history, or other credentials when applying for an insurance license;
  • cheating on an insurance licensing exam using unauthorized materials or devices, gaining outside access to exam questions and answers, getting unauthorized assistance during an exam, using an imposter to take the exam, or by other means;
  • license discipline by an insurance board in another state or jurisdiction or
  • violating court orders for child support or failing to pay state income taxes.

Misconduct Related to Insurance Producer Practices

  • violating insurance producer customs, conventions, standards, statutes, rules, or professional code of ethics;
  • violating insurance commissioner orders or subpoenas, obstructing an investigation, or violating the terms of a disciplinary sanction;
  • restraints of trade or unfair competition in insurance business;
  • dishonest or incompetent insurance practices, or
  • facilitating unauthorized insurance business with an unlicensed individual.

Misconduct Affecting Insurance Customer Interests

  • misappropriating or withholding customer property or money, denying customer rights, or frustrating customer opportunities;
  • defrauding a customer as to the terms or conditions of an insurance policy, including its premiums or coverages; or
  • falsifying insurance applications or forging signatures on applications or other insurance transaction documents.

Tennessee Insurance Department Disciplinary Grounds

As indicated above, Section 56-6-112 of the Tennessee Insurance Producer Licensing Act authorizes discipline for each of the above Model Act disciplinary grounds, with only modest alterations. Section 56-6-112 adds two other disciplinary grounds beyond the Model Act's disciplinary grounds. The first ground involves encouraging a person to apply for health benefits through the TennCare program when the person already has employer-provided health insurance available. The other ground involves selling insurance for an entity not licensed for that insurance business. Your matter may implicate other small but important differences between the Model Act and the Tennessee provisions. Our attorneys can closely examine your Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance disciplinary charge to determine whether you have a defense that Department officials exceeded their statutory authority to discipline.

Nature of Tennessee Insurance Department Charges

Do not misconstrue your Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance disciplinary charges as a finding of wrongdoing. Charges are only allegations, not findings. Allegations may lack evidentiary support and may involve speculation, guess, or conjecture, such as a proverbial fishing expedition, rather than a factually and legally supported claim. Do not mistakenly assume the truth and accuracy of alleged charges that you do not understand or that your experience and observations suggest are simply untrue. Department officials may instead expect you to come forward with a credible explanation for a complaint that Department officials themselves do not entirely trust or believe. Our attorneys can help you make that showing. Your discipline is not assured. We may be able to obtain prompt and voluntary dismissal of the charges. Even if the charges are in part accurate or wholly credible and true, we may be able to convince Department officials that your conduct does not warrant any sanction in favor of remedial measures preserving your license and reputation.

Defenses to Tennessee Insurance Department Charges

You have the right and the opportunity to have our skilled and experienced assistance in raising factual and legal defenses against your Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance disciplinary charges. Your defenses may fall into one or both of the following two broad categories.

Defenses Relating to the Complaining Witness

We may be able to show that the witnesses who made the complaint against you did not personally observe what they allege. They may instead guess or conjecture without sound factual basis. The complaining witnesses may alternatively have poor memory or other mental disabilities, undermining the reliability of their observations. The complaining witnesses may also have an axe to grind, meaning a conflict of interest. They may, for instance, be competitors trying to steal your insurance business or customers trying to recover an insurable but uninsured loss for which they alone are to blame. Their testimony may thus be inadmissible or wholly lacking in credibility.

Defenses Relating to the Quality of Your Actions

We may alternatively be able to show that although the complaining witnesses were basically correct in their factual allegations, you had other reasons and circumstances unknown to those witnesses that justify your actions as meeting all rules and standards. Our consulting insurance witnesses may attest that you met all standards. You may alternatively have reasonably relied on an advisor or supervisor's direction on a disputed matter, giving you safe harbor protection against discipline. Your clean record may also show that punitive sanctions are unwarranted, especially if your actions caused no harm, loss, or substantial risk of loss. These are only a few of the defenses we may be able to establish to defeat your disciplinary charges and preserve your license, reputation, and practice.

Responding to Tennessee Insurance Investigation

Retain us the moment you learn of a Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance investigation into your conduct. We may be able to supply the investigator with your statement and evidence in a reliable and convincing form and fashion, to head off disciplinary charges. Do not respond on your own without our skilled support, lest you share rushed, incomplete, uninformed, and thus inaccurate information that Department officials later construe as lying and obstruction.

Responding to Tennessee Customer Concerns

If you learn about customer or even colleague or competitor concerns before they reach the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, promptly retain us to help you sensitively and accurately disclose to those concerned individuals your sound basis for acting as you did. Do not appear to threaten or coerce a complainant or to interfere with a complaint or investigation. Let us help ensure that any communication you make with concerned individuals is fair, balanced, truthful, and helpful to the individual's determination of the appropriateness of your conduct. We may be able to head off an unnecessary, potentially embarrassing, and disruptive Department investigation with truthful disclosures.

Tennessee Insurance Department Procedures

You generally have a constitutional right to a hearing before an impartial decision-maker when a state licensing board threatens your property and liberty interests in professional practice. To respect your constitutional right to due process, Section 56-6-112 of the Tennessee Insurance Producer Licensing Act expressly requires Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance disciplinary officials to comply with the state's Administrative Procedure Act. We can invoke the Administrative Procedure Act's protections to ensure that you have fair notice, a fair hearing before an impartial decision maker, and a full opportunity for us to present your exonerating and mitigating evidence while challenging the Department's incriminating evidence. If you have already lost your administrative hearing, our attorneys can pursue the administrative appeal that the Administrative Procedure Act offers to reverse hearing decisions that are without factual and legal support or violate your other rights and protections. If you have already lost your appeals, the Administrative Procedure Act offers limited judicial review. Let our attorneys exhaust your administrative remedies until we have achieved your best possible outcome.

Premier Tennessee Insurance License Defense

If you face Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance disciplinary charges, your best move is to retain the Lento Law Firm's premier Professional License Defense Team for your timely, strategic, and effective defense. We are available across Tennessee. Our skilled and experienced attorneys have helped hundreds of insurance producers and other professionals across Tennessee and nationwide defend disciplinary charges of all kinds. Call 888.535.3686 or complete this contact form now for our highly qualified representation to protect your Tennessee insurance license, reputation, relationships, and business.

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