NCOIL Model Legislation Sets a National Template for Auto Glass Fraud Prevention

In late February 2025, the National Council of Insurance Legislators' (NCOIL) advanced a model auto glass legislation initiative—an effort to give state lawmakers a ready-made framework for regulating auto glass repair and replacement in ways that curb fraud, protect consumers, and create uniform ADAS disclosure requirements. The model bill's influence on state-level lawmaking would become apparent throughout 2025 as Iowa, New York, and Washington state all advanced versions of similar legislation.

The NCOIL model bill targeted several practices that insurers and legitimate shops alike identified as problematic. Chief among them: the assignment of benefits (AOB), whereby a vehicle owner signs over their insurance claim rights to a shop, which then pursues payment from the insurer directly—sometimes for inflated amounts. Florida had enacted an AOB ban for auto glass in 2023, and Kentucky followed. NCOIL's model legislation was designed to make that framework portable to additional states.

Beyond AOB, the model legislation addressed ADAS recalibration disclosure. Under the proposed framework, shops would be required to inform customers before beginning work whether the vehicle requires ADAS recalibration after glass replacement, whether the shop plans to perform that recalibration, and whether it will be covered by the customer's insurance. If recalibration is not performed, the shop must direct the customer to an appropriate specialist.

For shops operating in states that adopted the NCOIL framework, compliance would require changes to intake paperwork and customer communication procedures. Shops that already provided detailed pre-job disclosures were in the best position; shops that relied on informal verbal communication would need to adopt written documentation processes.

The model legislation also included a penalty structure, with violations potentially resulting in civil fines—creating real financial incentive for compliance. In Iowa's eventual version of the bill, the state insurance commissioner was granted authority to impose civil penalties of $1,000 to $50,000 per violation.

The NCOIL model proved highly influential. By year-end 2025, multiple states had enacted or introduced substantially similar legislation, transforming what had been a patchwork of state-by-state regulations into a more coherent national framework for auto glass consumer protection.