"We think financial education is important, but that many other groups are better situated to design, deliver and evaluate education than NAIC is," said Brenda Cude, professor, family & consumer sciences, University of Georgia.
"We think your most important role is to ensure that insurance markets are stable and competitive, especially for products that consumers might use to secure their financial futures later in life," Cude said.
"And NAIC's primary role in terms of education is to step up his effort to provide well-designed, consumer-tested information, education and disclosures that have value to consumers at that teachable moment when they're shopping for insurance products."
2020 0515 - InsuranceNewsNet - Rift Splits Over ACLI’s AG 49 Proposal, By John Hilton - [link]
2021 - InsuranceNewsNet - Life Insurance Check-ups: The Current Planning Environment As A Catalyst For Policy Review, By Caroline Brooks - [link]
2022 0914 - InvestmentNews - The Advisor’s Guide to Client Risk and Insurance, by Richard Weber - [link]
2023 0801 - InsuranceNewsNet - Chasing the Index: Life and annuity indexed products explode, by John Hilton - [link]
2023 0815 - InsuranceNewsNet.com - Washington state couple sues Pacific Life over IUL illustration, by John Hilton
2023 0902 - InsuranceNewsNet.com - Indexed life sales up 28%, drives strong Q2 for life insurance, Wink says, by Staff - [link]
2009 1026 - InsuranceNewsNet - Relieved to Have Survived a Dangerous Year, ACLI Members Look Ahead, By Ron Panko, senior associate editor, Best's Review - [link]
The year certainly tested the ACLI leadership. Frank Keating, its president and CEO, related the many actions he and his team took to work with federal officials to provide some level of support for affected life companies.
"The thing that concerned us, because we did not have an FDIC behind us, we have a system of guaranty funds in the states, if there were a run on life insurance companies. what would that do to us as an industry?
Because we were state-regulated, we were very concerned, if not alarmed, that the Fed, the FDIC, perhaps the SEC, obviously the Treasury Department, might have a high level of ignorance and not appreciate that individual companies within our industry may not be systemic, but we as an industry are."
2014 1223 - InsuranceNewsNet - Insurers Take Aim At IUL Illustrations InsuranceNewsNet, By Arthur D. Postal - [link]
2018 0530 - InsuranceNewsNet - NAIC Officials Hope To Hammer Out Best Interest Standard
By John Hilton - [link]
Working group members from conservative states such as Iowa, who say the current suitability regs are working fine, and more liberal states such as New York and at odds over the model law.
New York is moving forward with its own best-interest regulations, which officials say will be in place by the end of the year. The New York standard would cover both annuities and life insurance.
Similar to the DOL rule, the NAIC model would place limits on agent compensation, require more disclosures and set a “best interest” standard. The standard would apply to annuity sales only.
ACLI - "Including life insurance in the Model Regulation is unnecessary because life insurance sales practices are already subject to comprehensive state laws and regulations, which assure that life insurance products are sold consistent with the best interest of consumers," said J. Bruce Ferguson, senior vice president of state relations for the American Council of Life Insurers, in a letter received this week.
2018 1016 - InsuranceNewsNet.com - Industry Pressured To Find UL Policy Fix, by John Hilton - [link]
Kim O’Brien, National Association of Insurance Commissioners, Iowa Insurance Commissioner Doug Ommen, chair the Life and Annuities Committee, Richard Weber, ACLI - Jack Dolan
Unlike O’Brien, however, Weber is not looking to regulators to address the UL crisis.
“I would urge the ACLI (American Council of Life Insurers) as a trade organization of carriers that they need to recognize this is a public relations disaster,” he said. “I think ACLI needs to convene its members and say ‘Hey, guys, we need to come up with a solution.’”
ACLI's ability “to engage on individual policyholder issues with individual life insurance companies is highly limited,” said spokesman Jack Dolan in an email.
Interest rates are the real culprit behind the policy failures, he added.
2018 0919 - WSJ - Universal Life Insurance, a 1980s Sensation, Has Backfired: A long decline in interest rates caused premiums to soar when they were supposed to stay level, by Leslie Scism - [link-Gift]
A popular insurance product of the 1980s and 1990s has come back to bite many older Americans.
2019 06 - InsuranceNewsNet - How am I Going to Get Paid?, by John Hilton - <WishList> - [link]
(p23) - Sheryl Moore, Wink - "If I was an insurance agent starting out today, I would be terrified. You have to work twice as hard to make the same amount of money.'