BILL ANALYSIS
AB 953
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Date of Hearing: January 11, 2010
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION
Mike Eng, Chair
AB 953 (Eng) - As Amended: January 6, 2010
SUBJECT : Department of Motor Vehicles records: insurance
companies
SUMMARY : Allows insurance company agents to obtain home address
records from the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) under
certain circumstances. Specifically, this bill :
1)Extends, to the employees and authorized agents of insurance
companies, the privilege of obtaining from DMV the home
addresses of motorists and vehicle owners involved in
accidents with any individuals insured by those companies.
2)Requires all information obtained under this provision to be
subject to the use or disclosure limitations and data security
requirements that exist under state and federal law for the
insurance companies.
3)Requires these limitations and requirements to be enforced by
DMV.
4)Requires the use and disclosure of the information so obtained
to be limited to the provision of services to the insurance
company relating to the transaction or event for which the
insurance company would have been allowed to obtain that
information from DMV.
5)Prohibits the information from being disclosed for any other
purpose or to any other person.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Holds confidential any home addresses within DMV records and
prohibits DMV from disclosing residence address in their
records to any person, except a court, law enforcement agency,
or other government agency.
2)Exempts from that prohibition licensed insurance companies
that state, under penalty of perjury, that they are requesting
the information for the purpose of obtaining the address of
AB 953
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another motorist or vehicle owner involved in an accident with
their insured, or are requesting the information on an
individual who has signed a written waiver of the
confidentiality of his or her DMV home address records or an
individual insured under a policy if a named insured of that
policy has signed a written waiver.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS : Existing law allows financial institutions and
insurance companies to access address information of persons
under specified circumstances. This bill clarifies that
insurance companies' employees and the authorized agents of
those companies are covered under these provisions. This access
is necessary to verify identity and current location of
financially responsible party in vehicle accidents. Quite often
an insurance company involved in a subrogation action is seeking
to locate the vehicle owner and DMV is likely to have the most
up to date information. Accurate identity information protects
consumers from identity theft and errors in identity and it
protects the business community from unnecessary costs. This
bill is intended to ensure that financially responsible drivers
and owners can be properly identified.
Recent amendments to this bill that expressly subject insurance
company agents (typically collection agencies) to the same
limitations and restrictions as those that apply to the insurers
themselves were developed in response to concerns expressed by
privacy advocates. Further amendments will be necessary to
restrict this bill's information-gathering authorization to
those instances directly relating to vehicle accidents involving
a client of the insurance company.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
California Association of Collectors (sponsor)
Opposition
None received
Analysis Prepared by : Howard Posner / TRANS. / (916) 319-2093
AB 953
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