The Treasury Department is considering buying equity stakes in insurance companies, a sign of how the government’s $700 billion rescue program could turn into a piggy bank for a range of beleaguered industries.The availability of U.S. government cash in the middle of a global credit squeeze is drawing requests from insurance firms, auto makers, state governments and transit agencies. While Treasury intended for the program to apply broadly, the growing requests could put a strain on the $700 billion, a sum that only last month stunned lawmakers.

MetLife Inc. and Prudential Financial Inc., two of the nation’s largest publicly traded life insurers, are interested in exploring a sale of equity stakes to the government, according to people familiar with the matter.

On Sunday, a spokesman for New York Life Insurance Co., one of the highest-rated insurers in the U.S., said, “The Treasury has asked the life-insurance industry for help in developing solutions for strengthening the financial system. We agreed to work with other industry leaders and Treasury so we could play a constructive role in helping shape this important discussion.” He said the insurer, which is mutually owned, doesn’t require additional capital and has “not made any decision to accept capital, if offered.”

In September, the government extended an $85 billion rescue loan to giant insurer American International Group Inc. in exchange for an 80% stake.

Insurers are critical to market stability. Signs of eroding confidence at life insurers could further dent fragile business and consumer confidence. Insurers are among the biggest holders of the nation’s corporate debt, with $1.3 trillion on their books. They are long-term investors, holding the securities for years, even decades.

Most insurance companies are financially sound but have seen their long-term investments and stock prices fall in value. Some have holdings of riskier alt-A and subprime-mortgage backed securities. Insurers have suffered losses in bond and preferred-stock holdings from the collapse of companies including Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Insurers also have been hit with billions of dollars in unrealized losses as corporate bonds of all stripes suffered big declines. Low interest rates have damped interest income and a prolonged economic slump could dent the variable-annuity business and even hurt sales of core life-insurance policies.

Insurers would normally tap capital markets to raise money. But many are loath to attempt selling common stock because their share prices have been so battered. That’s one reason many insurers have been pushing the expansion of Treasury’s equity-stake program to raise capital.

Treasury had already envisioned insurance companies using one element of its rescue program: selling bad assets, such as mortgage-backed securities, to the government. But Treasury officials are considering whether to buy equity stakes in certain firms, according to people familiar with the matter.

Under the terms of Treasury’s program, eligible insurers must be operated by either a financial institution holding company or a savings and loan holding company. The holding companies must also be regulated by a federal agency.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson asked Congress for wide discretion in the program. That’s prompting requests from myriad industries. Some want capital injections. Others want to sell troubled assets, such as bad loans, to the government.

For most of this year, the insurance industry seemed to be weathering the credit crisis. The industry has plenty of capital to pay policyholders, according to insurance regulators in two big states and senior executives at credit-ratings firms. But in recent weeks, the stocks of some of these firms have been slammed. More bad news is expected next week, when many of the large publicly traded life insurers report third-quarter earnings.The big ratings agencies have the life-insurance sector on “negative” outlook, anticipating a round of one- to two-notch downgrades, as companies brace for additional investment losses, weaker earnings and reduced financial flexibility. Many life-insurance products are pitched to consumers on the basis of an insurer’s financial strength, so moving to a lower rating can have an impact on sales.

Allstate car insurance has been ordered to cut car insurance rates by 15.9% for residents in California. The news is likely to have a big effect on Allstate’s bottom line with the company insuring about 10% of the states cars. The rate cut comes into effect on April 14 and will result in average savings of $124 per vehicle.

The order comes at more than twice the rate cut Allstate had sought permission for. The California Department of Insurance had calculated that a rate cut of 19.4% was merited, however a state judge gave Allstate credit for providing services to low-income neighborhoods and brought the final rate reduction down to 15.9%.

The company feels it has been unfairly targeted and has been forced to cut rates by a larger percentage than other insurance companies.

Esurance car insurance has announced that it has signed a six-year agreement with AutoWatch. Tech savvy customers of the direct-to-consumer personal auto insurer will now be able to monitor their vehicle’s repair progress online.

I think this is great news for Esurance customers. It can be incredibly frustrating waiting for your vehicle to be repaired and not receiving any news from your insurance company on the progress.

The move seems to have been a winner with consumers, resulting in a 6% increase in customer satisfaction due to a 16.5% reduction (or 2 whole days) in repair time.

The long term partnership with AutoWatch is part of Esurance’s strategy to combine the best of technology and industry know-how to deliver customer hassle-free coverage with 24/7 customer service at a competitive price.

Investors had a little bit of a freak out at Progressive Car Insurance’s news that February monthly earnings fell 51%, dropping the share price by 6.6%. I guess the interesting question is; is this a sign of bad things to come?

Overall the situation is far from being bad for Progressive. Lets face it even if the economy is struggling a bit auto insurance is pretty much a necessity especially when you consider a basic level of cover is pretty much mandatory.

It’s not like a luxury good you can eliminate when times get tough, but maybe one you can cut back on a little. So, I wonder if that’s the reason for the decline in premiums written, are people opting out of full coverage and taking the basic policy?

On a yearly basis Feb 2007 – Feb 2008, premiums written for progressive have dropped just 3%, yet February itself is down 8% compared to February 2007. Does this mean the problems are just starting?

Of course investment income is also down which doesn’t help, kinda unavoidable when the interest rate keeps dropping (aren’t we getting close to 0% here people?) and the stock market is giving investors wobbly knees.

State Farm is currently under investigation for suspected deceptive medical exams and document reviews. We pay our car insurance company for peace of mind that if we’re involved in an accident we will be taken care of.

Unfortunately many people discover the hard way insurance companies really only care about their bottom line. Here’s what can go wrong:

- You sign a medical release form to allow your insurer to obtain medical information directly from your doctor. (seems to make sense after all your doctor has your interests at heart)
- Your insurer asks your doctor to confirm that the treatment you’ve received is related to the accident. Your doctor provides an affirmative report to the insurer stating this is the case. Unfortunately you’re never informed of this report.
- Your car insurer asks one of its doctors to review your medical documents, maybe all the records are given to the doctor……and maybe not.
- To your surprise the insurer’s doctor claims there is no relationship between your injuries and the collision and your claim is denied.

Surely your insurance company wouldn’t do that! Think again.

This scenario is forcing consumers to file bad faith claims against their insurance company to try and obtain benefits due to them.

An attorney can help protect your interests when you are at your most vulnerable.

Have you noticed your Arizona car insurance quote getting cheaper over the last four years? Apparently State Farm auto insurance rates have dropped a total of 20.29% for Arizona motorists in the past four years. Arizona features in the top 10 states with the highest rate cut, with New Jersey topping the list at 29.20%.

State Farm reported one of the reasons they have been able to drop motor vehicle insurance rates was due to the financial cost of auto accidents declining by 14.80% in the four year period. In fact State Farm reported that its rates were lower in 2007 than they were in 2003 for every jurisdiction in the country.

State Farm are able to focus on the long term interests of customers since they do not have any public stockholders who usually focus on short term results.

It is usually possible to obtain a quote for the car insurance company you are interested in from their website. A disadvantage of doing this is that if you want to compare quotes you will have to repeat the entire quote process at other sites.

The quote forms are usually pretty straightforward but can be time-consuming to complete. A quicker alternative is to complete a quote at a comparison site, once you’ve answered all the questions you will be provided with multiple quotes from top insurance companies and a comparison chart to help you compare your options.

There is no obligation to purchase and you don’t even have to provide your telephone number, so you are free to keep shopping around if you like.

Using an online service you can compare car insurance rates quickly and easily.
An added bonus is that your phone number is not required so you can feel confident that you will not get telemarketers calling you at all hours of the day and night to follow up on your quote.

The quote process is very comprehensive to make sure you get the most accurate quote possible. It does take a little while to complete the quote, but this is time well spent with the top 4 quotes displayed immediately along with a comparison chart to help you compare your options.

A comparison service can give you a quote for Progressive car insurance.

An advantage of using a comparison service is that it will give you quotes for different car insurance companies so you can see if your Progressive car insurance quote is cheap or if there’s a better option.

Progressive is a very popular company, insuring 8% of American drivers, so it is worth considering.

Farmers Insurance Group was founded in 1928 and is today the country’s third-largest writer of both private passenger automobile and homeowners insurance. The company is based in Los Angeles, California and operates in 41 states across the country, with approximately 18,000 employees. The company currently insurers more than 15 million customers.

To compare your Farmer car insurance quote with quotes from other popular companies click here.

While all large companies have both good and bad customer stories you might be interested to know that for Farmers Group there is a website dedicated to the subject called Farmers Insurance Group Sucks. Of course to be the third largest insurance company they must be doing something right, but it does pay to be an informed consumer and know what your choices are.