Mississippi P&C Study Guide

This part is insolvency and the regulatory frame. Mississippi rewrote its guaranty caps in 2025, its unfair trade practices list is a 1956-vintage nine, and — the real surprise — it has no unfair claims settlement practices act at all.

Guaranty association caps — four numbers, not one

The Mississippi Insurance Guaranty Association (MIGA) pays covered claims of insolvent property and casualty insurers. Its limits sit at Miss. Code Ann. §83-23-115(1)(a), as amended by Senate Bill 2894 of 2025, effective 1 July 2025, and you must read them at full subparagraph depth:

• (i) Workers’ compensation — uncapped. MIGA pays “the full amount of a covered claim.”
• (ii) Unearned premium — nothing “in excess of Fifty Dollars ($50.00) per policy.”
• (iii) All other covered claims — above $50, up to $300,000 per claimant.
• (iv) Property damage claims — above $50, up to $400,000 per claimant. New in 2025.
• (v) Cybersecurity — $300,000 for all first- and third-party claims under cyber coverage arising out of a single insured event, “regardless of the number of claims made or the number of claimants.” New in 2025.

Two structural points. The $50 is not a deductible — it is a floor, and the “in excess of Fifty Dollars ($50.00)” formula is repeated in (ii), (iii) and (iv). And watch the denominator: general and property damage run per claimant, the cyber cap per event. Twenty cyber claimants share one ceiling.

The net-worth provision runs backwards

Miss. Code Ann. §83-23-109(f) is read backwards more often than any line in the article — and note it is not a 2025 change: the sentence was already in the Code well before SB 2894, whose amendment to §83-23-109 added a new subsection defining cybersecurity insurance. Mississippi does not apply a net-worth test to its own claimants. It closes a different door: a covered claim “shall not include any claim… rejected or denied by any other state guaranty fund based upon that state’s statutory exclusions regarding the insured’s net worth.” That is anti-forum-shopping — an insured turned away elsewhere cannot collect here instead.

Otherwise a covered claim is an unpaid claim, unearned premium included, within an insolvent insurer’s coverage and limits, where the claimant or insured was a Mississippi resident at the insured event or the property is permanently located here. Punitive damages, retrospective-plan premium returns and subrogation recoveries are excluded.

Unfair trade practices — nine acts, and no claims act behind them

Miss. Code Ann. §83-5-35 enumerates exactly nine, (a) through (i): misrepresentation and false advertising of policy contracts; false information and advertising generally; defamation; boycott, coercion and intimidation; false financial statements; stock operations and advisory board contracts; unfair discrimination; designation of agent, solicitor, or insurer; and (i) “Any violation of Sections 83-3-33 and 83-3-121, Mississippi Code of 1972.” Its source note shows the age: Laws, 1956, ch. 329, § 4, touched cosmetically in 2010.

Now the deviation. There is no unfair claims settlement practices list in §83-5-35, and Mississippi has adopted no separate unfair claims act. The NAIC’s model-adoption chart records Mississippi as “NO CURRENT ACTIVITY” for Model 900, and no Title 19 chapter supplies one. Outside health claims, claim conduct here is common-law bad faith.

Rebating reaches §83-5-35 only through item (i) — which carries two cross-references: §83-3-33 and §83-3-121. §83-3-121 (“Rebates prohibited”) sits in Title 83, Ch. 3, Art. 3, Casualty Insurance Rates, and bars giving, directly or indirectly, “as an inducement to insurance or after insurance has been affected, any rebate, discount, abatement, credit, or reduction of the premium named in a policy,” or any other “inducement whatever, not specified in the policy.” It also bars the insured from knowingly accepting one. Exceptions cover agent commissions, policyholder dividends, and agents advancing premiums under MID rules.

The Policyholder Bill of Rights — rights without deadlines

19 Miss. Admin. Code Pt. 1, Ch. 34 (MID Reg. 2007-1, as amended) is the closest thing Mississippi has to claim-handling standards, and it still is not one. Rule 34.03 applies it to insurers “writing homeowners personal lines residential property coverage insurance policies” in the state — surplus lines companies and both underwriting associations included, personal-lines residential only.

The rights include 34.04(L), a written explanation of why a claim is denied “in whole or in part”; 34.04(M), adjuster, engineer and contractor reports and other documents not legally privileged; 34.04(Q), “the right to be treated fairly and honestly when making a claim”; and 34.04(R), the right to reject any settlement offered.

What it does not do matters more. It sets no acknowledgment, investigation or payment deadline, and Rule 34.07 provides that it “does not operate to expand coverage” and creates no private civil cause of action.

The Commissioner — elected, statutory, and Fire Marshal too

Under Miss. Code Ann. §83-1-3 the chief officer of the department “shall be denominated the Commissioner of Insurance, who shall be elected at the general election as other state officers,” for a term of “four (4) years.” This is a statutory office — the Constitution does not create it, so never cite a constitutional provision here. And under §45-11-1 he “is by virtue of his office the State Fire Marshal.”