Administration February 4, 2007

Empire State to Audit AIG's Workers' Comp Accounting

April 26, 2005 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - New York state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and Insurance Superintendent Howard Mills announced that the Empire State's Insurance Department would hire an auditor to examine how American International Group (AIG) has booked workers compensation premiums.
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A  joint news release said that the practice to be audited, now apparently discontinued, involved booking premiums for workers’ compensation coverage as premiums for general liability policies instead. The regulators alleged that by booking the income as something other than workers’ compensation premiums, AIG avoided paying its true share into various workers’ compensations funds.

According to the announcement, an AIG document dating from the early 1990s roughly estimated an unlawful benefit to AIG at tens of millions of dollars annually.

In 1992, an internal AIG legal memorandum to top management reported that the practice was illegal. This followed similar warnings made years earlier. It remains unclear when the practice stopped, according to regulators.

AIG, has recently been cooperating with the Attorney General and Insurance Department’s inquiries, the announcement said (See  AIG Executives Canned For Failing to Cooperate With Investigators ).

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