Yesterday, State Farm announced a new tagline “Here to Help Life Go Right,” which may be a more fitting, and honest moto than “Like a Good Neighbor.” Why? State Farm wants your life to go right so that when it doesn’t, they don’t have to pay out those valuable premium dollars toward your insurance claim. The proof is in the pudding—from egregious bad faith claims, to intimidation tactics, to attempting to eliminate access to options like consumer legal funding, State Farm has proven time and time again that they are really here to help life go right for their corporate executives, not help their policyholders’ lives get back to normal.
There was a change in the industry in the 1990s when insurers, including State Farm, turned their claims centers into profit centers and went from timely paying the fair value of claims to dragging their feet and attempting to pay out as little as possible—far below the fair value of the claim. And since then, when life doesn’t go right, policyholders have been in real trouble.
With three-quarters of people living paycheck to paycheck, it can be impossible to wait 30, 60, 180 days for a claim to get settled after an accident. Accidents can be devastating. Cars can be undrivable, injuries may leave people out of work. And life needs to go on. Bills need to be paid, children need to be fed. Many people struggle when State Farm is trying to boost its bottom line.
They use tactics to put on the pressure so that people settle for low, unfair offers, or just denied valid claims outright. It’s happened time and time again. And a reaction to those tactics has been the increased use of consumer legal funding, where a person can sell a portion of the potential proceeds of their claim for money now, when they are trying to get by. It can help families pay the bills and keep a roof over their head while they wait for a claim to settle fairly.
Consumer legal funding has become a necessity, but one State Farm doesn’t like because it helps people when life doesn’t go right and State Farm is trying to make money. They’ve pushed to eliminate access, and shown their true colors, yet again. Here to help corporate executive lives go right.
Thankfully, consumer legal funding users and advocates have been largely successful in re-buffing State Farm’s attempts to eliminate options that help policyholders defend themselves against State Farm’s tactics. It shows that when neighbors come together, they really can help make life go better, even when it doesn’t go right.
State Farm may be “Here to Help Life Go Right,” but I wish they could just help people get back to normal again. Those days are long gone.