Talk:Assurant

Miami connection

A component of Assurant, Assurant Solutions, is headquartered in Miami, Florida. With 1800 employees in Miami-Dade county, it is a major employer. Assurant Solutions was formed from various companies including American Bankers Insurance Company of Florida (founded in Miami in 1947). For this reason Assurant was added to Miami Wikiproject. GroveGuy (talk) 15:40, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Force-Placed Insurance

Undid page defacement by company PR rep. Versability (talk) 03:50, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Reverting Vandalism

I've noticed that there has been frequent vandalism on the Assurant Wikipedia page. For those who are watching this page, as I am, I'm sure we would all appreciate it when the vandalism is reverted immediately. I have gone ahead to revert the vandalism by 74.72.206.220. If vandalism continues to recur on a regular basis, shall we consider requesting semi-protection on this article? Your input and ideas are appreciated. Thank you! Presto808 (talk) 21:38, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Content Addition

Does anyone have availability to update the Board of Directors and the financial data in the info box? Here's the link to the Annual Report --MsGingerHoneycutt (talk) 23:25, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

The previous suggestions can be found in my sandbox for updating. I am declaring COI and will remain transparent and forthcoming while providing objective, verifiable, and reliable content throughout this process. Happy to provide support services and media sources for other editors looking to collectively evaluate and collaborate in the expansion of this page. MsGingerHoneycutt (talk) 20:33, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm picking up where MsGingerHoneycutt left off. I'm working on the suggestions above, updating the 3rd paragraph in the lede and Colberg's title in the infobox, and restoring NPOV, all of which can be found in my sandbox. As with MsGingerHoneycutt, I'm happy to provide any resources I can and collaborate with the community in editing this article. --FacultiesIntact (talk) 19:35, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I would also like to request that the address in the infobox be changed from "One Chase Manhattan Plaza" to "One Manhattan Plaza" to reflect the change in name after the building's sale to Fosun International per this Bloomberg article. FacultiesIntact (talk) 22:23, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Additionally, the "Corporate Governance" section is outdated. David B. Kelso is no longer on the board of directors, and Elyse Douglas and Jean-Paul L. Montupet have since joined, per Assurant's leadership page. FacultiesIntact (talk) 22:18, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

There is no reason why anyone in the general public would be interested in the board of directors--it is not encyclopedic information, and the appropriate thingto do is to remove it as over-detail. I've done that. Insistence on adding inappropriate detail is promotional, as only those closely connected with the company would wish to include it. There is an excellent place for it: the firm's website. The building name change is easy enough and I have done that. DGG ( talk ) 01:19, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your contributions DGG. Do you, or does anyone else have any ideas as to what else in the article could be changed to bring it up to a high enough standard to remove the advert banner?--FacultiesIntact (talk) 02:16, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

• User:FacultiesIntact I've reviewed the article and removed a few parts that seemed promotional to me. The remaining text sounds reasonably neutral, and I appreciate that the controversies section appears to be intact. With those considerations in mind, I've removed the caution from the top of the page. --Pine^✉ 03:07, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the help!--FacultiesIntact (talk) 21:11, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

• Pine, how would you feel about removing the "Corporate Governance" section? It seems redundant now that it's only one line and repeats information found in the infobox in the lede.--FacultiesIntact (talk) 00:43, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

• FacultiesIntact: Done. --Pine^✉ 03:03, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Translation

Would anyone here be interested in helping translate this article into French and/or Spanish? There aren't versions available in either languague. I have some knowledge of the two, but if there are any native or fluent speakers, I could really use the help.--FacultiesIntact (talk) 23:39, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Reworking "Health policy claim denials and cancellations"

This section could benefit from a chronological reorganization. I think it would read much better if the cases were presented in order of occurrence, and followed immediately by their respective rulings. Additionally, the section and its title feel less relevant now that Assurant Health has been divested. A line should be added to clarify the current state of ownership (much like the reference to Assurant being formerly known as Fortis). Would "Criticism and court rulings" be a more fitting section header? It's more neutral and relevant without absolving Assurant of what happened while they were still controlling Assurant Health.--FacultiesIntact (talk) 19:24, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

I have drafted an updated version in my sandbox here. I renamed the section "Court Rulings" and re-ordered it chronologically. I also updated the lead to reflect that Assurant now only has two business units, as well as the history section with new references and more detail about the sales of AEB and Assurant health. Comments and feedback are welcome.--FacultiesIntact (talk) 03:46, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

 Done. With the title, I feel the current title is still accurate. However I changed it to mention that it is Assurant Health that was involved, not the whole of Assurant. Stickee (talk) 23:07, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

I've been reviewing the actual South Carolina Supreme Court Ruling and have found nothing within it that suggests "that the company's policy was to target every policyholder recently diagnosed with HIV for an automatic fraud investigation." (Never mind that the text was pulled verbatim from this Reuters article) In fact, I think the court opinion suggests the opposite.

"The handwritten chart note identified Mitchell correctly as eighteen years old, but was erroneously dated May 14, 2001...A Fortis investigator reviewed the records and discovered the erroneously-dated intake note in Dr. Chandler’s files. That information was then forwarded to Fortis Senior Underwriter Kate Stephens (“Stephens”) for review. Stephens completed a “referral summary” for the rescission committee and recommended that Mitchell’s policy be rescinded on the grounds that he had misrepresented his HIV positive status. Stephens’s summary referenced the handwritten notation on the intake form as the sole foundation for her recommendation."

By no means am I suggesting that Assurant did not act in bad faith here; I agree with the court opinion. But I don't think there was an automated program. The quoted text above suggests the opposite, that an actual person reviewed the case, and as such, I think the language describing the automatic fraud investigation should be removed. Can anyone weigh in on this? @Stickee: any thoughts?--FacultiesIntact (talk) 23:58, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Request for comment on court ruling

There is a clear consensus to use both the South Carolina Supreme Court decision or the Reuters article. Editors noted that the South Carolina Supreme Court decision when used should be verbatim while the secondary analysis from Reuters should be paraphrased and included as usual.

Cunard (talk) 00:08, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Should the South Carolina Supreme Court decision or the Reuters article be given more weight as to whether or not Assurant had a policy of automatically flagging HIV positive policyholders? See this post for more detail.--FacultiesIntact (talk) 21:27, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

• Responding to RfC - The problem with using the Supreme Court decision is that it is a primary source, and as such, we have to be extra careful of WP:SYNTH. That said, we don't want to display bad information either. I think carefully wording a statement that pulls from exactly what the Supreme Court decision would be appropriate. We can then include a separate analysis provided by reuters after showing the primary text. Anything from the supreme court decision must be verbatim. Anything from reuters can be reworded and integrated as normal. Fieari (talk) 00:48, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

I was about to comment, but Fieari has it exactly right. DGG ( talk ) 04:34, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

• Both, Primary Supreme Court As Fieari and DGG note, I also agree, the court ruling should be the definitive primary source, reference, and citation but the corporate media coverage also contains suitable commentary which I believe should be provided. Anyone looking for information on the subject should be afforded links to as much legitimate materials as possible -- more information is always better than less, no need to make researchers hunt for the text they'll plagiarize for their High School reports. :) Damotclese (talk) 15:13, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
• Both - equal weight, taking primary source concerns into account. In the earlier discussion, "automatically" is taken to mean "automated." A company or organisation might have a consistent policy to do something - if X occurs, then Y - to do it "automatically" - without the process being automated, that is, involving computers or machines. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 14:49, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
• Both per Fieari, above. -The Gnome (talk) 07:58, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
• Both, per Fieari, above. I see that the info is there now, so this is moot. However, I'm no fan of insurance companies that try to cheat customers, but in reading the sources I felt it was necessary to make a couple of changes. The first thing is that the article made it sound like there were two HIV cases. I combined the info and removed some duplicate verbiage to clarify that they are the same case. Also, the company's decision to cancel the policy is based on what it thought was reliable evidence that the HIV diagnosis was made before the policy was started. I added that important detail, and changed the word pretext to reason, since having hard evidence that a policy was set up under fraudulent circumstances doesn't imply unfair motives. The Supreme Court general condemnation about the company's ill-advised behavior in other cases is still there, so I think it's fairer now.Timtempleton (talk) 19:58, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks so much everyone for the feedback, and to Timtempleton for the edits. I truly appreciate it. I had drafted up a revised version in a sandbox here. Would someone mind reviewing it? My worry was that the sentence beginning "In court proceedings" still leaves things ambiguous, and by directly citing the SCSC's decision, it would help clarify exactly what each source said.--FacultiesIntact (talk) 20:12, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi - I didn't read the Supreme Court ruling in as much detail as you, but one thing concerns me. In the version you wrote versus the one I wrote, one can't tell why the Supreme Court ruled against the company. It wasn't for the automatic reviews, as far as I can tell, but because they were sloppy, according to Reuters. That info should be there somehow, right? Otherwise, readers won't understand what the basis of the ruling was.Timtempleton (talk) 16:25, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Updating financial figures in the infobox

The financial data in the infobox is now out of date, and Assurant has filed their 10-K with all the relevant info. I updated the figures in my sandbox and linked the 10-K. Would someone mind taking a look and updating the article?--FacultiesIntact (talk) 00:16, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Updating Assurant's operations

Since selling off Assurant Health and Assurant Employee Benefits, Assurant as a company operates rather differently now. I've updated copy about their three operating segments in the lead, history, and operations segments in my sandbox, as well as made a few other updates including their current Fortune 500 ranking, and fixing the last of the history section to better clarify the timeline of events. Can someone take a look at it for veracity and neutrality?--FacultiesIntact (talk) 17:06, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

 Done Stickee (talk) 02:02, 19 September 2017 (UTC)