1978 - GOV (House) - Life Insurance Marketing and Cost Disclosure

  • 1978 0807, 0814 and 0815 - GOV (House) - Life Insurance Marketing and Cost Disclosure, John Moss (D-CA)  ---  [BonkNote]
    • [PDF-1049p-GooglePlay]  -  [PDF-826p-govinfo.gov] 
    • 1978 12 - GOV (House-Report) - Life Insurance Marketing and Cost Disclosure Report Together with Dissenting Views, John Moss (D-CA)  ---  [BonkNote]  ---  [PDF-109p]
    • Jay Shaffer, Subcommittee Counsel
    • ACLI - Julius Vogel, Prudential, on behalf of the American Council of Life Insurance
    • House - Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce - Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations 
  • 1979 02 - SOA - Permutations and Computation (part 1), EJM, Society of Actuaries - 3p
  • 1979 - SOA - Cost Disclosure, Society of Actuaries - 18p
  • 1979 - FTC - Life Insurance Cost Disclosure Report - 460p
  • 1979 0103 - Washington Post - Study Claims Insurance Policies Confusing, By John F. Berry - [link]
  • 1983 - AP - A Federal Depository Institutions Life Insurance System,  by Joel Seligman - 48p
  • (p412) - Jay Shaffer, Subcommittee Counsel:  Do you have any position on the yardstick issue?
  • Julius Vogel, Prudential, on behalf of the American Council of Life Insurance, ACLI  - Yes.
  • Mr. SHAFFER. Would you tell us what it is?
  • Mr. VOGEL We don t think that it's a necessary part of the disclosure or sales process.
  • Mr. SHAFFER. And the reason for that is?
  • Mr. VOGEL. The reason for that is several fold.
    • There are the technical difficulties with the yardstick itself, which have to do with the difficulty of getting up-to-date figure on what various are doing, which an earlier witness testified about.
    • Also, a great deal of insurance in this country is sold on a combination basis with a term insurance part and a permanent insurance part, and there is a question then what do you do with these two separate pieces, which certainly makes the yardstick less attractive? 
  • (p413) - Julius Vogel, Prudential, on behalf of the American Council of Life Insurance, ACLI - The cash flows of a policy are defined by the Society for this purpose as "the actual transfer of funds between the policyholder and the insurance company in either direction, and includes premiums, dividends, cash values and death benefits."  Actuaries Report, supra n. 33, at 6.

  • So what I am saying is that the Belth calculations cannot get out of a policy anything that isn't there already.

    • The premiums and the dividends and the amounts of insurance and the cash value8 are all there is to a policy.

    • You can fool around with them any way you like but mostly you can get at all the facts just by looking at basic things.

  • (p450) - Mr. SHAPIRO. On the grounds that it may incriminate me, let me say that I have met some actuaries that were pretty good salesmen. I have worked with them. But they have not been in the field.
  • Mr. COLLINS. Have you ever known any? I just won't even name five. Have you known a single outstanding salesman that was an actuary? You have seen them that were lawyers. You have seen them that were bankers. You have seen them come in from the grocery businessMr. SHAPIRO. No, sir; I have not.
  • Mr. COLLINS. But the truth of the matter is that there never has been an outstanding-and what they are proposing here is to have every insurance salesman be an actuary
  • (p460) - Jay Shaffer, Subcommittee Counsel:
    • Advertisements for agent training materials appear frequently in the National Underwriter magazine.
    • One such ad states, "Selling is 98 percent understanding human beings; 2 percent product knowledge."
      • Wouldn't you agree that a salesman should put more than 2 percent of his effort into understanding the product?