Trade Practices

  • Equal to the need for financially sound insurance products is the need for socially responsive insurance companies.
    • Consumers are not well served by a company that meets statutory reserve requirements but engages in unacceptable or morally-barren trade practices any more than they are served by companies that offer them pie-in-the-sky policies backed by assets worth no more than the paper on which they are written.
    • Therefore, the issues brought to the NAIC should not be so narrow as to overlook the relationship of product service and product soundness.
    • Both elements need to be balanced as decisions are made in a changing industry.

—  Lymcon L. Olson, Jr., NAIC Presidential Address

1983-1, NAIC Proc.