California Insurance Fraud Attorneys
Los Angeles Corporate Fraud Lawyers

The Law Offices of Nadrich & Cohen, LLP, a successful and aggressive California and nationwide law firm is seeking appropriate companies and/or individuals who have utilized Marsh & McLennan or AON as their insurance brokers for placement of insurance policies. Marsh & McLennan & AON have participated for decades in fraud and bid rigging by placing its clients' insurance with certain carriers solely to obtain additional commissions undisclosed to their clients. What Marsh & McLennan and AON clients did not know was that a secret commission was paid to Marsh & McLennan or AON for their insurance placement in addition to the disclosed brokerage fee.

Unlike markets for securities, commodities, and other financial products, commercial insurance is bought and sold in private. Insurance brokers such as Marsh & McLennan & AON are no more than middle-men who match up buyers and sellers in return for a cut of the transaction. Marsh & McLennan is the leader in selling property casualty coverage to businesses around the world. Industry wide, premiums paid last year just in the United States totaled $176 billion.

The bid-rigging scheme worked as follows: Marsh & McLennan or AON steered business toward certain insurance companies at designated prices. They then would solicit additional artificial higher fake bids from other companies to give the appearance to the client of real bidding. Marsh & McLennan did this even as it claimed in public statements that its "guiding principles" was to consider its clients' best interests "first and foremost." By this activity, Marsh clearly did not consider its client's best interest "first and foremost."

The kick-back scheme worked as follows: Insurance brokers such as Marsh & McLennan & AON received directly from insurance companies additional secret commissions over and above their ordinary commissions. These commissions were paid for steering volume business to a particular company's way. Insurance companies called these fees "contingent commissions" or "market service agreements". The client never knew. Critics call these commissions for what they are:
"undisclosed kickbacks."

These improper fee arrangements date back for decades. Many insurance industry executives say it was known to select insiders that these arrangements were in place in order to boost insurance brokers' revenue. However, these payments were never disclosed to the insured/client to which the brokers owed a fiduciary duty to. Critics and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer maintain these practices are poorly disclosed and are a conflict of interest for brokers ostensibly acting on a policy holder's behalf.

Attorney General Spitzer has obtained documentation of employees of AIG who supplied fake quotes to provide the illusion of competitive bidding for Marsh & McLennan clients knowing; at all times, that another insurance company would nonetheless win the bid. Attorney General Spitzer's investigation includes AIG Insurance Company, Bermuda based Ace Insurance Company, Hartford Insurance Company and others.

Marsh & McLennan received $800 million in revenue from contingent commissions in 2003 - the equivalent of more than half of its $1.5 billion income.

Marsh & McLennan cheated its own corporate clients by rigging bids and wrongfully collecting huge fees from insurance companys for throwing business their way. They purposefully did not disclose these fees to their clients. If this occurred to you and/or your company, please immediately contact our experienced insurance class action law firm as we are vigorously investigating a class action against Marsh & McLennan and AON.

The effect of contingent commissions are that they wrongfully reward brokers for hitting profit or volume targets and thus provide brokers a financial incentive to choose one company over another, even if the other company offered a better price or better terms.

Nadrich & Cohen, LLP and co-counsel are actively interviewing Marsh and AON's clients for purposes of bringing a civil lawsuit against Marsh & McLennan and/or AON. The lawsuit's basis will be that the incentive fees or contingent commissions or placement service agreements paid in exchange for sending more business to an insurance company's way were in reality, wrongful commissions which defrauded the policy holder by not intentionally providing the policy holder with the best deal possible. The cost of insurance was also artificially raised, forcing buyers to pay higher premiums, thus further cheating buyers. The lawsuit will seek to have contingent commissions declared illegal, recover damages for Marsh customers and forces Marsh & McLennan to give up illegal profits.

Nadrich & Cohen, LLP and its co-counsel are pursuing a separate class action to demand reimbursement to Marsh & McLennan stock investors because Marsh's wrongful actions devalued the price of the stock.

The Law Offices of Nadrich & Cohen, LLP is seeking clients of Marsh & McLennan who were victims of the undisclosed contingent commission bid-rigging and other anti-competitive activities. We strongly believe Marsh's actions harmed its clients by keeping their insurance prices artificially inflated.

Our law firm is an experienced and aggressive insurance fraud law firm actively seeking policy holders who purchased insurance through Marsh & McLennan or AON, Inc.

Companies that we know who are involved in the bid-rigging process included AIG or American International Group, Hartford Fire Insurance Company, Chubb Indemnity Corp., and other insurances.

If you or your business purchased insurance through Marsh & McLennan of AON, please contact us immediately. Nadrich & Cohen, LLP works on a contingent fee basis only. We are paid a fee only if we obtain a recovery. If we do not obtain a recovery our clients owe us nothing for our services.