What term best describes an insurance company's plan to raise premium costs despite assuring policyholders otherwise?

The term that best describes an insurance company's plan to raise premium costs while assuring policyholders that their rates will remain stable is fraud. Fraud in the context of insurance involves a deliberate misrepresentation or deceitful practice aimed at benefiting the insurer financially at the expense of the policyholder.

When an insurance company reassures its clients that premiums will not rise and then subsequently increases those premiums, it creates an expectation based on that false assurance. This breach of trust can be categorized as fraud since the insurer is not being transparent with material information that impacts the financial decisions of their clients.

In contrast, defamation refers to harming someone's reputation through false statements, which is unrelated to insurance pricing practices. Unfair discrimination typically addresses situations where individuals are treated differently in pricing or policy terms based on specific statuses or characteristics, and errors and omissions relate to mistakes made by insurance agents or brokers that impact coverage. However, the intentional misleading of policyholders about premium costs aligns most closely with the definition of fraud.