A State Farm executive has been fired after he was secretly recorded alleging that the insurance company hiked rates for California homeowners reeling from the devastating Los Angeles wildfires.
Haden Kirkpatrick, State Farm’s vice president for innovation and venture capital, thought he was on a Tinder date when he started talking about his company’s California subsidiary filing for an emergency 22% rate hike for its homeowners’ policies, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Kirkpatrick said the request was “kind of” orchestrated “but not in the way you would think,” according to the video published by James O’Keefe’s media company.
“Our people look at this and say, ‘S—, we’ve got like maybe $5 billion that we’re short if something happens,’” Kirkpatrick said in the video, recorded in January but published last week.
“We’ll go to the Department of Insurance and say, ‘We’re overexposed here, you have to let us catch up on [our] rates’. … He’ll say ‘Nah.’ And we’ll say, ‘OK, then we are going to cancel these policies.’”
Kirkpatrick was also recorded saying that homes should not have been built in the Pacific Palisades, the area most devastated by the fires.
He claimed the homes were only there because residents wanted to have “natural areas around them for their ego,” and that the area was “a f–king desert.”
State Farm General, the company’s California subsidiary, has filed for an emergency 22% rate hike for its homeowners’ policies, citing the fire and a $5 billion decline in its surplus account over the last decade, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The request was recently the subject of a hearing with Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, who initially rejected the hike but later agreed to consider more evidence.
Now, Lara demands an explanation, telling the Times through a spokesperson, “We want answers from State Farm. This only raises more questions.”
In a statement to the outlet, State Farm confirmed Kirkpatrick had been fired — while stating that his “assertions” in the video “are inaccurate and in no way represent the views of State Farm.
“They do not reflect our position regarding the victims of this tragedy, the commitment we have demonstrated to the people of California, or our hiring practices across the company,” the company said.
Kirkpatrick also confirmed he was fired for the remarks, which he made during a Tinder date in January that he now believes was a setup.
He declined to comment further.
