Prudential Claims Bias in State Probe

NEW YORK — The Prudential Insurance Co. has accused Florida regulators of unfairly singling out the giant insurer for disciplinary action and of leaking unfavorable information about the company to the press.

The accusations came in a formal response the company filed earlier this week to the Florida Insurance Department’s application Dec. 9 to revoke Prudential’s license to do business in the state. A copy of the 10-page response was obtained Friday by The Times.

The state agency had accused the company of a “widespread, systematic pattern of deception” and forgery in the sale of life insurance policies. In its filing this week, the New Jersey-based insurer denied those charges and further complained that the insurance department had “acted arbitrarily and capriciously” in singling it out rather than investigating sales practices of the entire life insurance industry.

The next step in the case will be an administrative hearing before a state hearing officer. No date for the hearing has yet been set.

“We obviously feel that we have the evidence to back up the charges, and this will all come out at the hearing,” a spokesman for the Florida agency said Friday.

In a separate development, a three-member panel of National Assn. of Securities Dealers arbitrators this week rejected claims by two former Prudential managers in Florida who had alleged that they had been wrongfully fired for threatening to become whistle-blowers about the company’s life insurance sales practices.