CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) – Pennsylvania’s insurance commissioner signed on to a settlement in a multistate investigation of claims handling by UnumProvident Corp., the nation’s largest disability insurer.

Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Diane Koken said Tuesday she signed the regulatory agreement that requires the Chattanooga-based insurer to change claim practices and reconsider more than 200,000 previously denied claims.

UnumProvident also will pay a $15 million fine, company executives said Thursday.

The company, which insures more than 25 million people and has about a quarter of the market, estimates the settlement will cost it $127 million in restitution to policy holders and in enacting required changes.

About 10,000 Pennsylvania claims will be reassessed, Koken said.

Last week, insurance regulators in Tennessee, Maine and Massachusetts released a report on the investigation and endorsed the agreement, which company executives said would become valid when approved by two-thirds of the states.

The multistate agreement was negotiated under the auspices of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

“This shows how critical the coordination of multistate, insurance regulatory action is in providing uniform, verifiable and effective state-based actions for the benefit of all consumers,” said Koken, who also serves as president of the association.

Paula Flowers, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, said Tuesday that Koken was encouraging all states to approve the agreement. Flowers predicted the 32 states needed to make it valid would sign on.

“We don’t have any doubt we are going to get that number,” Flowers said.

She said a little over 6,000 denied Tennessee claims would be reconsidered.

Officials in New York and the U.S. Department of Labor have also approved the settlement, UnumProvident spokeswoman Mary Clarke Guenther said Thursday.

If the company does not meet the settlement requirements after two years, there is a possible “contingent fine”‘ of up to $145 million.

UnumProvident executives previously said disputes represent a small fraction of the roughly 400,000 disability claims the company processes annually.

UnumProvident was created by the 1999 merger of the Unum Corp. of Portland, Maine, and The Provident Companies, based in Chattanooga, and employs about 3,600 people in Maine.