This bill creates a new law directing the Office of the Insurance Commissioner to study how insurers use credit history, credit-based insurance scoring models, and other rate factors that may disparately impact Washington residents when determining personal insurance premiums, rates, or eligibility. The commissioner must collect information from entities transacting personal insurance as defined in RCW 48.19.035 and may require identified authorized insurers to provide requested information. The office may contract with actuaries and other consultants to analyze disparate impacts across races, ethnicities, sexes, socioeconomic status, and national origins; identify alternative rate factors that do not rely on credit history or disparately impact those groups; estimate how current uses and alternatives affect consumer costs, premiums, rates, eligibility, and availability of personal insurance; and develop policy options for the legislature. The bill requires a preliminary report to relevant legislative policy committees by December 31, 2025, and a final report by September 15, 2026, and declares that data provided for the study are confidential and privileged and not subject to public disclosure under chapter 42.56 RCW. The commissioner may publish aggregated analyses that do not identify individual companies; such aggregated data are open records. The section explicitly does not affect the commissioner’s authority under chapter 48.37 RCW and expires December 31, 2033. This is a procedural change establishing a mandated study, data-collection and reporting requirement and authorizing contracting for analysis; it does not create a new crime, change criminal penalties, or state any enforcement mechanisms. The text provided does not include the definition of “personal insurance” from RCW 48.19.035, does not specify funding or budget authority for contracting, and does not describe remedies or penalties for entities that fail to provide requested information.

If enacted, the Office of the Insurance Commissioner must gather data from companies that sell personal lines insurance and run a detailed study of how insurers use credit history and other factors that may unequally affect people by race, ethnicity, sex, socioeconomic status, or national origin. The office can hire actuaries and consultants, must deliver a preliminary report to the legislature by December 31, 2025 and a final report by September 15, 2026, and may publish aggregated findings while keeping company-level data confidential; the study authority expires December 31, 2033. The immediate effects will fall on insurers, who will need to assemble and provide the requested information and thus incur staff time and possible data-handling costs, and on the Insurance Commissioner, who will need staff time and contract funds to complete the analysis. Contracted consultants and actuaries are likely to be hired. Consumers in the named demographic groups could see future policy changes based on the study’s options, but the bill does not specify funding sources for the work, the exact definition of which insurers are covered (the definition of “personal insurance” is not included here), or enforcement steps if companies don’t comply.