Insurance Commissioner’s Office expands social media presence

Published 10:48 am Tuesday, December 21, 2010

In an effort to expand consumer outreach, the Office of the Insurance Commissioner has added a Facebook page to its lineup of social media tools.

“We’re a small agency with a broad consumer-protection mission, and we want people to know we can help them with insurance problems,” said Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler. “We’re using social media to help spread the word.”

The agency set up its Washington Insurance Blog and Twitter feed last year. The blog draws thousands of hits a month, and among state insurance departments nationwide, Washington now has the second-largest number of Twitter followers.

Typical posts include:

• Insurance advice after wind storms and floods

• Health insurance reforms

• Information about Medicare changes

• Insurance fraud cases

• Fines and other disciplinary action against companies, agents and brokers

The agency’s website also includes online tools to file and track an insurance complaint, look up disciplinary actions against insurers or agents, review the number of complaints against particular insurers, etc.

Any Washingtonian with insurance questions, complaints or problems can call the insurance commissioner’s consumer hotline at 1-800-562-6900 or e-mail AskMike@oic.wa.gov.

Here are the links:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/WSOIC

The Washington Insurance Blog: http://wainsurance.blogspot.com/

Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/#!/WAinsuranceblog>