No. SB 230
Filed under Insurance.
Transparency in Insurance Matters; Defining the term “trade secret”; revising the requirements of a notice of trade secret submitted to the Office of Insurance Regulation or the Department of Financial Services; specifying that certain information is not a trade secret and is subject to public disclosure; requiring the office to review all claims of trade secret protection; requiring that fees, commissions, and profit-sharing agreements between insurers and affiliates be filed with the office and made publicly accessible on the department’s website, etc.
Plain English Summary
AI-GENERATEDInsurers can no longer shield major categories of financial information as trade secrets. Data behind rate calculations, affiliate fees and commissions, executive pay, and shareholder dividends must all be publicly disclosed.
Insurers must now proactively file every fee, commission, and profit-sharing agreement with an affiliate with state regulators, and the department must post those filings publicly on its website.
Claiming trade-secret status gets harder. Submitters must now explain the legal basis for the claim, show that public release would cause actual, demonstrable harm, and publish a public summary describing the submission.
Regulators must review every trade-secret claim and can deny ones that fail the definition, an outside auditor checks the office's calls every other year, and knowingly false claims made to hide unlawful conduct draw fines up to $25,000.
AIFinancial information behind insurance rate calculations, along with affiliate transactions, officer and employee compensation, shareholder dividends, rate filings, and legislative-advocacy material, can never be withheld as a trade secret and must be publicly disclosed.
AIA brand-new statute requires every fee, commission, and profit-sharing agreement between an insurer and its affiliates to be filed with the Office of Insurance Regulation and posted publicly on the department's website.
AIA submitter must now swear that public release of the information would cause actual, demonstrable harm, not merely that the information is confidential, adding a new substantive hurdle beyond simple secrecy.
AIThe office must review every trade-secret claim submitted to it and must issue a written denial whenever the information does not meet the statutory definition or falls into one of the excluded categories.
AIA person who knowingly files a false trade-secret claim to conceal unlawful financial practices faces an administrative fine of up to $25,000 per violation, on top of possible license suspension or revocation.
AIEvery trade-secret submission must now come with a plain-language public summary describing the nature of the material, without revealing the protected details themselves.
AIThe Financial Services Commission must hire an independent, insurance-regulation-expert entity at least every other year to review the office's trade-secret decisions and report findings to legislative leaders.
AIThe section now defines 'trade secret' by pointing to Florida's general trade secret statute rather than leaving the term to be worked out case by case in insurance filings.