Insurance and data companies press for exemptions as consumer groups press deletion rights in H.2 11 debate
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Summary
Industry witnesses from NAMIC and LexisNexis urged carveouts or California-aligned data‑level exemptions to protect insurance underwriting and identity‑verification services, while VPIRG and Consumer Reports urged robust deletion rights and a path to a universal opt‑out portal.
Industry witnesses urged narrow exemptions for insurance and regulated data uses while consumer advocates and Consumer Reports pressed for deletion rights and broader protections.
Sean McLaughlin of the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies said insurers are subject to the Gramm‑Leach‑Bliley Act and related state regulation, and he asked the committee to consider an entity or targeted exemption so that actuarial needs, fraud prevention and long‑tail claims remain intact. "We would just like to see an amendment ... exempting insurance from the bill," McLaughlin told the committee.
Dylan Zwicky of LexisNexis described the operational role data brokers play for identity verification and motor‑vehicle history reporting and urged alignment with California's approach. He argued some brokered datasets are "data for good" that insurers and financial institutions depend on for pricing and fraud prevention, and recommended data‑level exemptions for GLBA/PPPA/HIPAA items or mirroring California's delete‑exemption structure.
Consumer advocates pushed back. Zachary Tominelli (VPIRG) said H.2 11 is a meaningful interim step toward correcting a market failure in which consumers have no direct relationship with brokers; he pressed the committee to accelerate study of a universal delete portal and noted the California portal saw hundreds of thousands of deletion requests soon after launch. "This bill moves us in that direction," Tominelli said.
Matt Schwartz of Consumer Reports supported the bill and the use‑case exemptions for fraud prevention and identity verification but argued that most broker data outside credit reporting is unregulated and should be subject to deletion rights and notice. He said some broker profiles are low quality and used to make invasive inferences, which justifies a consumer deletion remedy.
Committee members questioned how use‑case exemptions would operate in practice, whether a GLBA entity‑level carveout would allow regulated entities to re‑sell data to unregulated buyers, and whether the secretary of state can build a secure, consumer‑facing interface in a reasonable timeframe. Witnesses on both sides said more precise drafting on exemptions and operational controls would be necessary for the bill to move forward without creating regulatory gaps or harming legitimate services.
The committee recessed for a planned break and said it would return to consider additional witnesses and technical amendments.
