Providing innovative representation to insurance clients

Already one of the most intensely regulated businesses in the United States, oversight of the insurance industry is continually increasing. Growing complexity and increasing cost pressures, particularly in the healthcare sector, are just two reasons for this additional scrutiny.

As an insurance-industry participant, you face new, more complex regulatory compliance concerns, in addition to your ongoing business issues. That’s why, when you require legal counsel, you need highly experienced lawyers who understand the specifics of your unique industry. That’s where we can help. For more than 30 years, Foley Hoag has provided innovative representation to our insurance clients, along with ahead-of-the-curve regulatory counsel.

Our lawyers have consistently demonstrated their ability to combine their knowledge of insurance law and regulation with a sophisticated understanding of the current political environment in which our clients operate. We strive to help each of our clients accomplish their corporate goals by providing cost-effective strategies combined with successful implementation.

We are particularly proficient at the following matters:

  • Regulatory and legislative services
  • Rate setting
  • Licensing
  • Mergers/acquisitions/demutualization/redomestications
  • Insurance fraud
  • Insurance insolvencies
  • Alternative dispute resolution
  • Employment law
  • Coverage disputes

We also have current experience in every major insurance proceeding in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; and we have extensive national and international capabilities. With this experience, our lawyers can provide you and your organization with the cost-effective strategies and advice necessary for successful implementation of your business objectives.

Representative Experience

The following matters are examples of the types of work we have done for our insurance clients:

  • Successfully defended against an effort by regulators to pierce the corporate veil and hold our client, a domestic insurer, responsible for its foreign parent’s bankruptcy.
  • Helped a national health insurance provider successfully put its rate-setting proceedings on a winning track through annual increases.
  • Represented, since 1975, agents organizations’ and auto insurers’ unique interests in rate setting proceedings before the Massachusetts Division of Insurance.
  • Completely rewrote a foreign country’s insurance laws, in accordance with a World Bank directive, and then worked with the country’s finance minister to secure passage in Parliament
  • Acted as lead counsel on behalf of two small mutual insurers in “demutualizing” the companies. We provide both corporate and regulatory services to our client.
  • Obtained a decision by the Supreme Judicial Court, on behalf of Massachusetts life insurers, validating a regulation requiring unisex premiums for life insurance.