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If you’ve got a beef with your insurance company in Iowa, it’s most likely related to accident or health coverage. And whether it’s your health, auto or homeowners coverage, chances are good that your complaint is about a denied claim or a low-ball settlement offer.

Among Iowa policyholders who filed formal complaints against their insurers, 43 percent of the complaints in the past fiscal year were related to health insurance, according to figures from the Iowa Insurance Division. And more than one-quarter of the total complaints filed with the state were due to either a claim denial or a disputed settlement amount.

The good news is that fewer of us appear to be wrangling with our insurance companies lately. According to a report released Jan. 30 by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the number of formal complaints filed against insurance companies by consumers was down 3.6 percent in 2006, the latest year for which figures were available, compared with 2005. In Iowa, the state’s fiscal 2007 numbers indicate complaints were down about 7 percent compared with fiscal 2006.

Iowa Insurance Commissioner Susan Voss said she’s not sure she can explain the decrease.

“I don’t know if we’re doing a better job in responding to initial questions to consumers so that they don’t really have a complaint,” she said. “I really haven’t quite figured that one out yet.”

In fiscal 2007, which ended June 30, 2007, the state’s insurance division handled 2,045 formal complaints, compared with about 2,200 the previous fiscal year. During the same period, however, the number of inquiries to the division soared to approximately 29,000, up from about 17,000 the year before. Part of the reason for that increase may be additional help-desk workers who were added in the past year, Voss said.

“Generally, when a consumer calls and they have an issue such as ‘My rates are too high,’or ‘I should have gotten this much money for my car,’ we do open a complaint file,” Voss said. “We contact the company or the agent in regard to that complaint and do an investigation to determine in fact whether that person has a legitimate complaint or not. It can be as quick a turnaround as one day, where it’s not covered under your policy terms and we close the file, or ‘You know what? They should have paid for that, and a check’s in the mail.'”

In many instances, consumers file their complaints electronically, using a Web query form on the insurance division’s Web site.

Generally, the division tries to handle all complaints within 80 days, Voss said. “Companies are required to respond to us; they can’t blow us off, so to speak. And there’s a penalty if they don’t respond to us in a timely manner. So, we have good response from at least our domestic (Iowa) carriers.”

Consumers who haven’t yet tried to resolve an issue with their insurance company can also get assistance from the division, Voss said.

“Many types of insurance, the companies have an internal review process that a consumer can go to, but the consumer may not know that and we can certainly find out for them,” she said. “We certainly wouldn’t want someone not to call us simply because they think they have to go through some additional process. In health insurance there is often an internal review process available, and we would always counsel a consumer to go through their internal appeals process.”

Very few of the complaints end up in the courts, “mainly because companies don’t want to go that far,” Voss said. “And we have authority to seek action against companies without having to go to court. The cases we see going to court anymore from this office are more criminal in nature: agents who have defrauded consumers out of money, stolen funds.”

Increasingly, state insurance commissioners are working together more closely on consumer issues, she said. In September, for instance, Iowa was among five states that led negotiations toward a $20 million, 37-state settlement agreement against United Healthcare for violations of state laws regarding claims payment services.

“So if we’re seeing a pattern in Iowa, we will contact other states and say, ‘We’re seeing this with a particular carrier; are you seeing it as well?’ The idea is to have states work together when they see a similar pattern or trend. So instead of Iowa doing their own thing and Missouri doing their own thing, we’re all going to work together and have one settlement. It’s certainly less time-consuming for states in working together, and cheaper for us. So you’ll probably see in the future these large settlements that Iowa will get will be based on a collaborative effort with other states.”

The NAIC maintains an online consumer database (www.naic.org/cis) in which anyone can look up complaint data for any insurance company. The data available includes numbers and types of complaints for each company, broken out by state as well as by type of coverage and particular types of complaints. Additionally, consumers can look up the ratio of complaints relative to the amount of business the company insures overall.

“I think if you’re really out there shopping around and you’re going to do your own investigation, that’s just another tool you can use,” Voss said. “You can also call us; if we’ve done any administrative actions you can take a look at those. The larger a company, chances are the more complaints they’re going to have.”