Is Your Insurance Consultant Licensed? A Molly Mulebriar Report

                Recently, a South Texas school district hired a fee based insurance consultant to assist the district in a competitive Request for Proposal process and to make recommendations to the Board of Trustees. The “consultant” assured the district that he was properly licensed.

Molly Mulebriar, ace investigative reporterette, spent the better part of five minutes  investigating the “consultant’s” claim. A quick call to the Texas Department of Insurance verified that the “consultant” was not licensed, nor was there any record that he had applied for a licence.

Mulebriar informed her cousin at the school district of her findings. “Pasqual, you better tell the Superintendent about this. It could end up being a huge embarrashment for him, as well as the district!”

Not to worry. The Superintendent ignored the warning, staff covered their collective rear-ends with memorandums, and the consultant continued on with his work.

The RFP was advertised, proposals were accepted by the deadline, and the consultant recommended certain changes to the district’s group health plan. The Board of Trustees took the advice of the un-licensed Texas insurance consultant, and changed vendors.

A similar situation occurred at the Houston Independent School District several years ago: http://www.kycbs.net/Mercer-Texas-Case.htm

Editor’s Note: What makes the Houston situation interesting is the question of rebating. But that is another matter to discuss on it’s own merits in another posting (Illegal rebating happens quite frequently in South Texas, in our opinion).