Zax Under Oath
By Robert Warne - December 2, 2003 Kicking off their third week of hearings yesterday members of the Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee got some straight talk from an industry big wig.
Testifying under oath, Stanley Zax, chairman and president of Zenith Insurance Co. defended his company's recent filing to maintain its current rates on Jan.1, 2004.
According to reports, he acknowledged the benefit of recent legislative reforms and credited them for not having to hike his rates up by 20 percent.
Zenith has had its first profitable year after losing tens of millions of dollars over the past eight years and Zax let the Committee know that he didn’t have to apologize for making money.
Zax told the Los Angeles Times last week that, "My rate filing is my rate filing. And if they want to litigate it, it's fine with me… I'm not going to go broke like 25 other companies did."
The Committee has threatened carriers by suggesting it would give Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi the authority to set and enforce rates.
In an attempt to take that option off the table Garamendi explained to the Committee that such a move could ultimately discourage carriers from writing workers’ compensation policies.
But according to the Associated Press, Zax said he could buy on to such a plan if there was some way to de-politicize the process.
The current round of hearings before the Committee are different than those previously held because those called to testify are required to do so under oath. The last time this procedure was used was to interrogate energy company executives.
| 
__May11th2017.gif)
.gif)