Provides for the transparency of setting insurance rates

House Bill 736 amends Louisiana Revised Statutes 22:1464(D) to establish comprehensive procedures governing trade secret claims in insurance rate filings. The bill replaces the existing administrative hearing process with a formal notice-and-submission system requiring insurers claiming trade secret protection to file a notice of request for nondisclosure with the Commissioner of Insurance. The legislation specifies that failure to file such notice constitutes a waiver of any trade secret claim. The bill defines qualifying trade secrets as information deriving independent economic value from not being generally known and being subject to reasonable secrecy efforts, and it imposes strict formatting and documentation requirements including clear marking of protected materials, physical separation from non-protected materials, a sworn affidavit detailing the basis for the claim, and a public summary describing the nature of the submission without disclosing protected details.

The bill significantly expands public access to insurance rate information by establishing categories of information that cannot qualify as trade secrets, including all financial data used in rate calculations, affiliate transactions and arrangements, employee and office compensation, shareholder dividends, all information contained in rate filings themselves, information used in legislative advocacy, and the public summaries required by the bill. Insurance companies, agents, managing general agents, reinsurers, and third-party administrators are directly affected as they must now comply with strict procedural requirements when seeking confidentiality for rate-related submissions. The Louisiana Commissioner of Insurance gains enhanced authority to review and deny trade secret claims that fail to meet statutory criteria. The Department of Insurance is authorized to impose fines up to twenty-five thousand dollars per violation and may suspend or revoke insurance licenses or certificates of authority for persons who knowingly assert false trade secret claims to conceal unlawful financial practices.

The bill operates within Louisiana's insurance regulatory framework established in Title 22 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes and directly modifies the existing rate filing provisions of Section 1464. It replaces the prior system that allowed insurers to request administrative hearings before the Division of Administrative Law within ten days of a commissioner's determination regarding confidentiality. The new scheme eliminates the automatic stay of the commissioner's determination that occurred upon hearing requests and removes the in-camera review process formerly available to courts. The legislation requires the commissioner to contract with independent third-party entities with insurance regulation expertise at least once every other year to review trade secret claims and submit findings to legislative leadership, creating an ongoing oversight mechanism. The statutory framework intersects with Louisiana's Louisiana Uniform Trade Secrets Act principles by incorporating the definition of trade secrets as information deriving economic value from secrecy and being subject to reasonable protective measures.