Privately held 
LLC will pay New York $10.6 million and give customers $1.4 million to settle a 2006 civil suit filed by the state’s attorney general in regarding payments to policy owners.
The attorney general’s office determined that the Philadelphia-based company should have paid owners $1.4 million more for the market value of their insurance. Coventry wasn’t assessed any penalty or fine in ending the case.
Coventry First is a leader in the growing multibillion-dollar life settlement industry, a business that helps people cash in life insurance policies before they die for a fraction of their value.
Chief Executive Alan Buerger on Friday thanked the attorney general’s office for its attention to consumer issues in the life-insurance industry, saying he hoped the office would continue to look into anti-consumer actions meant to deprive policy owners of their holdings’ full market value.
“We will continue to fight for consumers’ rights to access the market value of their life insurance policies,” Buerger added.
At the time of the suit’s filing, Eliot Spitzer was New York’s attorney general. He was succeeded by Andrew Cuomo as he left the post to become governor, but resigned later amid a prostitution scandal.
Spitzer contended at the time the suit was filed that Coventry First violated fraud and antitrust laws by making secret payments to competitors that stifled bidding and weren’t disclosed to policy sellers.
