Delaware Insurance Commissioner Karen Weldin Stewart fined Allstate Insurance Co. and Encompass Insurance Co. a total of $50,000 for violating state insurance laws, which the insurers blamed on computer problems.

Karen Weldin Stewart

Both companies signed consent orders ending the investigations.

In the Allstate case, the insurer failed to provide defensive driving discounts to qualifying policyholders.

In the Encompass case, the company imposed an accident surcharge on policyholders involved in accidents even though they were not the party at fault.  Exactly 3,645 Delaware policyholders had the accident surcharge assessed wrongly, the commissioner’s office said.

In a statement, Stewart said she “both companies did a good job of notifying and refunding all monies owed to policyholders.” The companies paid a total of $848,355 in refunds, according to Stewart’s office.

Allstate and Encompass cited computer errors and programming oversight as the cause of the violations and said the problems have been fixed, according to Stewart.

Stewart said she will increase the fines, up to $100,000 for each company, if the problems arise again.