1970s – Government Hearings – Snippets

  • Ernest J Moorhead (Jack). Second, belonging in the area of the actuary, there are questions about the reliability of dividend illustrations.
    • By reliability I am not referring to whether those dividend illustrations will be met in practice.
  • Senator Richard (Dick) Stone (FL-D).  Or whether they are on projections with the facts that are on hand at the time you make projections.
  • Mr. Moorhead.  Yes. whether all actuaries are following the same process in converting the same dividends into an dividend illustration of the policy.
  • Senator Stone. Well that is not the subject. You are not suggesting that the actuarial standardization be made a subject of regulation are you.
    • You are urging that a society of actuaries, the group itself, professionally do that.
  • Mr. Moorhead. Yes, I am. I am, I may say, in favor of minimum regulation and maximum encouragement by the regulators and the possible regulators for action on a voluntary basis.
    • In this matter I am discussing, the Society of Actuaries has gone a certain distance with a report that is in your hands.
    • I just think they haven’t gone far enough, and that is a separate matter.
    • The third of the matters that belong in the actuarial field is the question-I’m not sure that I have heard it come up in this last day or so-whether the public can safely reply on that word “participating” as meaning what the buyer’s guide says that it means, and what the insurance policy says that it means.

1975 1203 and 1204 – GOV (Senate) – Veterans Insurance Information Disclosure, Senator Stone (D-FL) – [PDF-989p-GooglePlay]

  • I have read with interest the report on H.R. 12934 by our distinguished colleague from West Virginia and the subcommittee.
  • I appreciate the $2,885,000 reduction from the administration’s request.
    • However, I note that the increase over the FTC’s current year’s spending still will be $4.1 million.
  • The report reads:
    • The committee views with alarm, the growing tendency of many agencies to invade the jurisdiction of other departments and agencies of the Government and act beyond the scope of the jurisdiction that the Congress intended.
    • They slap the FTC for meddling in the life insurance industry-a role traditionally left to the 50 sovereign States of the Republic.

—  Hon. Theodore M. (Ted) Risenhoover. Of Oklahoma in the House of Representatives – Thursday, June 8, 1978 

govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1978-pt13/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1978-pt13-2-3.pdf

  • CHAPTER III – THE MARKET, THE NAIC, AND THE FTC
  • We would have expected to find the NAIC employing its influence to dissipate the wholly unnecessary confusion that surrounds the term-whole life controversy.
    • Regrettably, we find the NAIC at the forefront of efforts to perpetuate it.

1978 12 – GOV (House – Report) – Life Insurance Marketing and Cost Disclosure Report Together with Dissenting Views, John Moss (D-CA)  —  [BonkNote]

  • Isn’t it more realistic to assume a customer wants to know what the cost will be if he carries that policy out to maturity? (p13)

—  Senator Howard W. Cannon (D-NV), Chairman of the Committee

1979 0710 and 1017 – GOV (Senate) – FTC Study of Life Insurance Cost Disclosure, Howard Cannon (D-NV)  —  [BonkNote]

  • During the course of….we ascertained that there were very few people within the Federal Government with an understanding of the insurance industry.
    • A staff memo…stated: “It appears that for many years the workings of the life insurance business have been misunderstood by those at the [Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department] associated with the question.

—  John LaFalce (D-NY)

1979 1011 and 1022 (Part 1) – GOV (House) – Small Business Problems with Insurance, John LaFalce (D-NY)  – Part 1 – 1979 1011/22  – [PDF-337-GooglePlay]