Michigan lawmakers want to make the state's insurer division statute easier to read - and harder to misread.
House Bill 6375, introduced on September 24, 2026, by Reps. Carter and Wozniak, would amend Section 5511 of the Michigan Insurance Code. The bill has been referred to the Committee on Finance.
The target is a section that governs what happens when one insurance company splits into two or more separate entities - how assets move, where liabilities land, and which entity holds the policies afterward. As drafted in 2018, the statute uses pronouns like "it," "its," and "they" to refer to the dividing insurer, each new insurer, and affected shareholders. HB 6375 would replace every one of those pronouns with the full noun phrase, so there is no question about which entity a given provision applies to.
That matters because insurer divisions involve real money and real policyholders. Section 5511 controls how capital, surplus, and other assets vest in the resulting insurers. It determines who is liable for policy obligations after the split. It sets out how shares are converted or canceled, and what appraisal rights shareholders retain. A pronoun that could point to more than one entity in that context is not just a style issue - it is a potential coverage dispute waiting to happen.
The bill would also update a cross-reference to the Uniform Commercial Code, changing the terminal citation from MCL 440.9994 to MCL 440.12501 to reflect the code's current structure.
One detail worth flagging: HB 6375 carries a contingency clause. It would not take effect unless a companion measure, House Bill 6347, is also enacted into law. The two bills are designed to move together.
For carriers, compliance teams, and coverage counsel handling restructurings in Michigan, the bill signals continued legislative attention to the insurer division framework first added through Public Act 421 in 2018 - even where the underlying rules themselves remain unchanged.
The bill is currently in committee and has not been enacted. No hearings have been scheduled as of the date of this article.
