State Farm executive fired over comments about rate hikes
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A top State Farm executive was fired this week after saying the insurer’s California rate hikes are “kind of” orchestrated and after making disparaging remarks about Pacific Palisades homeowners that were caught on an undercover video.
Haden Kirkpatrick, State Farm Mutual’s vice president for innovation and venture capital, was recorded saying that the request by its California subsidiary for rate hikes was “kind of” orchestrated “but not in the way you would think,” according to a video published by O’Keefe Media Group, a conservative outlet.
State Farm, the largest home insurer in California, continues to seek approval of a 22% emergency rate hike even as it faces complaints over its handling of insurance claims.
“Our people look at this and say, ‘S—, we’ve got like maybe $5 billion that we’re short if something happens.’ We’ll go to the Department of Insurance and say, ‘We’re overexposed here, you have to let us catch up our [rates]’. ... He’ll say ‘Nah.’ And we’ll say, ‘OK, then we are going to cancel these policies,’ ” Kirkpatrick said in the video, recorded surreptitiously in January after the fires.
State Farm General, the subsidiary and California’s largest home insurer, has filed for an emergency 22% rate hike for its homeowners policies, citing the fires and a $5-billion decline in its surplus account over the last decade. The insurer has said it is now left with just over $1 billion in surplus to handle another big catastrophe.
Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara on Friday rejected State Farm General’s request for an emergency 22% home insurance rate hike due to the Los Angeles fires unless the insurer can provide more evidence it is warranted.
That request was the subject of a recent hearing with Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, who initially rejected the hike but agreed to consider more evidence.
During the meeting, a State Farm executive told Lara that without the rate hike the company “may have to take actions that we otherwise don’t want to do,” according to a transcript of the meeting.
The company has estimated the Pacific Palisades, Eaton and other fires on Jan. 7 will cost it more than $7 billion, though with reinsurance its net losses will be closer to $600 million.
In response to the video, Michael Soller, a spokesperson for Lara, said, “We want answers from State Farm. This only raises more questions.”
Kirkpatrick also is recorded saying that homes should not have been built in Pacific Palisades but that residents want to have “natural areas around them for their ego,” calling the area “a f— desert.”
He further said he tasked the company’s HR team to create a year “2040” workforce that is more “Hispanic and Latino,” which he said was being “biased ... away from my own kind.”
State Farm released a statement that “the individual in the video is no longer associated with State Farm” and his assertions are “inaccurate and in no way represent the views of State Farm. They do not reflect our position regarding the victims of this tragedy, the commitment we have demonstrated to the people of California, or our hiring practices across the company.”
Kirkpatrick said that the company fired him for making the remarks, which he said were recorded on a Tinder date in late January that he now believes was a setup. He otherwise declined to comment.
State Farm General, California’s largest home insurer, estimates it will pay $7.6 billion to settle its Los Angeles fire claims but reinsurance will lower its losses to about $612 million, including its costs for bailing out the state’s Fair Plan.
Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog sent a letter Thursday to Lara calling on the commissioner to investigate the unvarnished remarks, which it said “suggest that State Farm is not simply reacting to financial risk but is deliberately using cancellations and the threat of future cancellations to pressure the Department of Insurance for rate increases.”
James O’Keefe is the founder and chief executive of O’Keefe Media Group, which publishes undercover videos provided by “citizen journalists” to “expose corruption, abuse, lies hidden from public view.”
The conservative activist previously founded Project Veritas, which also published undercover videos, but has been criticized for deceptive editing.
In 2013, O’Keefe agreed to pay $100,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a former employee of the community organizing group ACORN, who had been depicted in an undercover video apparently offering to help smuggle underage girls into the U.S. to act as prostitutes. The employee said he had reported O’Keefe to police for proposing an illegal act prior to the video’s airing.
O’Keefe denied any wrongdoing and in the settlement said that he was unaware of the employee’s assertion that he had called the police prior to the video’s release. O’Keefe’s attorney described the payment as a “nuisance settlement.”
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