Two Zurich employees have admitted criminal charges of bid-rigging brought by the New York attorney general, the company said.
The charges have been brought in the wake of the New York attorney general's probe into the business relationships between insurance brokers and insurance companies.
Attorney general Eliot Spitzer had chiefly been investigating contingency commission practices at the world's largest insurer Marsh & McLennan Companies (MMC).
In their guilty pleas, the underwriters admitted to following and executing the directions from a supposedly neutral broker to submit bids designed to lose, thus awarding the business to the designated "winner", the attorney general office said.
Zurich said the two employees were underwriters in Zurich's excess casualty unit in the specialties business of North America Commercial.
The company said as a result of an internal review that had scrutinized Zurich's relationship with MMC, the two employees had already been suspended from employment.
