More than 30 Montanans will see premiums waived – or get cash refunds – from a $698,000 settlement reached last month between the Montana Insurance Commissioner ‘s office and a San Francisco-based company that sold Montana farmers a kind of insurance against weather events.
The company is a Monsanto subsidiary called The Climate Corporation. One of the salespeople said the company’s materials were misleading, leading many farmers to believe they were getting a kind of crop insurance when they really were not.
Additionally, the company was selling their insurance in Montana with unlicensed agents who did not have formal appointments with the company.
Insurance Commissioner Monica Lindeen’s spokeswoman Jennifer McKee explained how Climate Corporation worked.
“Climate Corp gathers data from weather sites and supplements the data from other weather sites, and then a farmer would buy a policy that would say, ‘I want to buy a policy against getting so much rainfall,” McKee said. “If that amount of rainfall was recorded from these weather sites, the farmer would either have to pay in or get money out, but it wasn’t insurance against any kind of loss.”
McKee said some of the farmers have already received over $238,000 back from the company, while others will not have to pay the amount that Climate Corp said they owed, which results in the total of $698,000.
Source - http://newstalkkgvo.com
