Committee weighs bill to restore statewide publication of insurers’ abstracts

The Senate Industry and Business Committee heard testimony on House Bill 1398 on March 17, a proposal to require insurers’ annual abstracts to be published across North Dakota’s newspapers rather than concentrated in a small set of papers.

Proponents said the change preserves a practice used since the 1930s and protects rural readers’ access to limited financial information about companies that insure them. Cecile Wurman, executive director of the North Dakota Newspaper Association, told the committee the Insurance Department this year directed that abstracts be printed in only eight papers, a change that will cut smaller weeklies and their readers out of that distribution. “This cuts out most rural people, even though small town weekly newspapers often have more readers,” Wurman said.

Supporters and several local publishers argued the abstracts have public value during a period of frequent extreme-weather claims and claim denials, and that printing abstracts supports small newspapers financially. Kelsey Majeschi, a publisher of 10 community papers, said fewer than 20% of her readers subscribe to the larger daily (the Forum) and that losing abstract revenue would cost each small paper between about $6,000 and $20,000 annually. Art Hegabach, a long‑time weekly owner, said the designation of only a few newspapers to print the abstracts amounted to a single official interpretation that changed a century of practice.

The Insurance Department, represented by Deputy Insurance Commissioner John Arnold, opposed the bill. Arnold said the abstracts are incomplete, North Dakota‑only snapshots of a company’s activity and are not legal notices. He noted that full annual statements and department examination reports are available digitally upon request and argued that the print abstracts give only limited information about an insurer’s overall solvency. “For any company that writes in more states than North Dakota, this does not give a complete financial indicator of the solvency of that company,” Arnold said.

As a compromise, Arnold described an alternative used in other states: periodic consumer notices paid for or run by the department that explain how to use the department’s consumer services. He cited Wyoming as an example that repealed the abstract requirement and printed recurring consumer‑assistance notices instead. Arnold also said the statute (section 26.1031) gives the commissioner authority to designate one paper in each judicial district and that the department chose the highest‑circulation paper in each district to maximize print reach.

Supporters and the department offered numbers to frame the fiscal impact: proponents said there are roughly 2,700 abstracts annually at a cost to the industry of about $250 per notice (about $675,000 before this year’s change); Wurman testified that restricting publication to insurers with in‑state bricks‑and‑mortar could reduce the number of notices this year by roughly one‑third and the total to about $420,000 spread over 73 newspapers if the historical distribution were retained. The department said the notices are fees paid by private companies to private newspapers and suggested replacing them with periodic consumer‑assistance advertisements that would go to all papers if the legislature wanted to continue supporting local media while improving public value.

The committee took public testimony from multiple publishers and from the Insurance Department. No final action was recorded at the hearing; the committee closed the hearing after testimony and will consider the bill and any amendments in committee.