Insurers secretly meet Fed’s Bernanke to warn of price cuts
AIG’s rivals met Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke earlier this month to urge him not to allow AIG to use it government bailout cash to distort the market by cutting prices, the Wall Street Journal reports.
It details a meeting on 4 March at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington.
Reuters added that industry executives and competitors said in December that AIG has been lowering prices to win new business and boost market share after receiving bailout dollars, even as market fundamentals suggest that prices need to be raised.
Last month, Republican Paul Kanjorski, chairman of the House subcommittee on capital markets and insurance, said he would look into claims that AIG is cutting prices to win business.
Kanjorski and Spencer Bachus, the leading Republican on the US House Financial Services Committee, asked the Government Accountability Office to examine the issue.
Reuters said: “The government watchdog said recently it has not seen any indications that AIG's insurance pricing is inadequate or out-of-line with previous pricing, although there is a general consensus that the insurer may be pricing products more aggressively.
Other AIG news
- AIG has started removing signs from offices as it changes the name of its profitable businesses to AIU Holdings.
- Protesters took a "Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous” bus tour to the Connecticut homes of AIG executives. The event was organized by Connecticut Working Families, a small liberal political party.
