Insurers’ Auto Rates up While Liberty Mutual’s CEO Earns Nearly $50 Million a Year

Author: Joshua Brabant

In a May 15, 2012 edition of the Boston Globe, Todd Wallack wrote in an article ”Auto insurance rates…are marching steadily upward again” which was about a month after his April 11, 2012 article, where he wrote “that Liberty Mutual’s longtime chief, [Edmund F. “Ted” Kelly], earned an average of nearly $50 million a year from 2008 to 2010, making him one of the highest-paid corporate executives in the country.”

How is it that insurance companies always blame increased premiums on increased litigation and too many plaintiff’s attorneys, but yet somehow the head of the Liberty Mutual is one of the highest-paid corporate executives in the whole country? The whole of the United States of America. Something clearly does not add up. So it stands to reason that if increased litigation is primarily the reason for increased premiums, insurance companies would not be making money hand over fist like these articles indicate. So there is clearly another much simpler explanation for the increased premiums: the insurance companies are increasing their own salaries.

Everyone knows insurance companies will continue to sing that same tired tune about lawyers causing all of the problems, since it works out nicely for them to blame attorneys (a easily vilified group ) when it takes all the focus off the enormous amounts of money the giant monolithic insurance corporations are raking in. While at the same time saying “hey, if you are mad that your rates are up, stop hiring attorneys when you are in an accident.” But we all know that is not the case. If everyone stopped availing themselves of their rights in hiring an attorney when they were injured in an accident, it would mean the insurance corporations would amass even more obscene amounts of cash to themselves and certainly not redistribute it to their insureds in lower premiums.

The obscene amounts of money the insurance companies are pulling in clearly indicates one thing above the rest: plaintiffs attorneys should be getting more for their client’s injuries and that we need to work harder to make sure the companies pay out the appropriate amount.