SNL Financial named in A.M. Best Co. lawsuit
Jinfo Blog

By Nancy Davis Kho

Item

An article last week on PropertyCasualty360 noted that SNL Financial, which provides news, financial data and expert analysis on the banking, insurance, financial services, real estate, energy and media & communications sectors, is being sued by its competitor, A.M. Best Co, a credit rating organisation that serves the insurance industry. According to the report by Chad Hemenway, the lawsuit alleges improper use of A.M. Best's copyrighted ratings and information on the SNL website.

Hemenway reports, "A.M. Best says SNL came to them in 2004 and in 2007 and asked to reproduce A.M. Best’s ratings and press releases on the SNL website. A.M. Best says it refused the request…The Oldwick, N.J.-based rating agency says it learned SNL has access to press releases and ratings on A.M. Best’s website and accessed this information about 10,000 times in 2010". Evidently the lawsuit was triggered after A.M. Best launched an internal investigation, based on reports that SNL was distributing A.M. Best content to SNL subscribers.

In an industry when competition is a pragmatic means of providing ever broader and deeper information solutions to users, instances of competitors working together - gingerly - while competing in other markets abound. Nearly every vendor has faced the prospect of selling one's data to a competitor, and has weighed the benefits of a new revenue stream against the risks of helping fortify a competitor's position.

What makes the allegation somewhat unusual, if it is accurate, is the transparent nature of SNL's alleged efforts once they were rebuffed. Hemenway reports that the lawsuit alleges that from October to 31 Dec, 2010 someone with an SNL email address accessed A.M. Best’s website nearly 3,400 times, and "one user logged onto the site 2,543 times and accessed 733 press releases and 1,665 ratings during the time period". That level of activity begs the question of why A.M. Best didn't uncover the unusual access sooner, through data analysis and monitoring systems.

Scheduling for the trial will take place by the end of June.

« Blog