New York's attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, spoke to the National Press Club in February, discussing the recent business scandals on which he has launched a crusade. He cited the businesses in question for serious “breaches of fiduciary duty,” including the insurance industry and the brokerage firms that he has tackled. At his dinner table one evening, he told the audience, he asked his 15-year-old daughter what her favorite word was. She gave him that typical teenager look and responded that she did not have one, but she sure knew what his were: fiduciary duty.

Spitzer's attack on the insurance industry has been headline news. Scanning recent National Underwriters reveals stories such as: “Conn. Sues Marsh, ACE” (Jan. 31), “Spitzer Eyes Personal Lines” (Jan. 24), “Agents on the Defensive” (Jan. 3), and Sam Friedman's Jan. 10 editorial, “Is Spitzer Unethical?” (Well, maybe, maybe not. Yes, he was buddy-buddy with the new guy at Marsh. As Friedman said, however, “Spitzer has done a lot of good in exposing wrongdoing in the financial services industry but, like any politician, he is a media hound.”)

The transgressions that Spitzer and his colleagues are exposing are embarrassing to our industry, as well they ought to be, although some of us had been aware of the sugary deals between insurers and brokers for years. Spitzer's complaint, however, is far more than just brokers' lack of disclosure, and agents are not off the hook, either. On Jan. 3, National Underwriter's Mark E. Requet reported that three major property-casualty associations saw a need for “repairing the damage to their members' reputation caused by allegations of wrong-doing on the part of a few, while keeping regulatory over-reaction in check.” California's insurance commissioner, John Garamendi, “is considering language to require producers to deliver 'the best available coverage,'” he continued. Apparently agents are not sure what that means. Hey, guys, it means that if you are pushing insurers that are likely to go bust or will not pay claims, you are doing your customers a disservice.