Comments About – NAIC – Insurance Regulators

  • 2025 0624 – LIFE180 / Chris Kirkpatrick – Interview With IUL Litigation Attorney LIVE – [Robert Rikard]  —  [BonkNote]  —  [VIDEO-YouTube-01:19:10]
    • Robert Rikard – Getting ready to launch a new firm –  Only doing these types of cases
    • We are going to put a dent – people Selling IUL as an investment, Stealing money from lower class and lower middle class peple – We are going to put a stop to it, because regulators are not. We can bring pain and we do.
  • Mr. Mead: We feel that if periodically attention is called to the agents, whether their business has been satisfactory as regards persistency, or unsatisfactory, we shall do much to encourage the good man, and also the poor man, that he may put his business on a higher plane.
    • It will also be of advantage to us in studying the pitfalls of many of our producers.  (p254)

1919 – The Record, American Institute of Actuaries – Estimating the Rate of Persistency – [PDF-GooglePlay-451p]

  • (p1501) – John Durkin, New Hampshire Insurance Commissioner: As a starting point, there is little regulation of the life insurance industry by the States.
    • The States do little with respect to life insurance regulations for many reasons, mainly because there are very few problems with complaints over claims.
    • Most of the staffs are involved with complaints relating to automobile insurance and health insurance.
    • Life insurance is sort of the stepchild of many, if not most, insurance departments.

1973 0221 and 0222 – GOV (Senate) – The Life Insurance Industry – Part 2 of 4 – Philip Hart (D-MI)  —  [BonkNote-Part 2 of 4]  —  [PDF-733p-GooglePlay]   

  • 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]

  • Some of our problems, however, have been caused by regulatory bodies. 

—  Barbara J. Lautzenheiser

1981 – SOA – The Life Insurance Business — The View of Consumerists, (rsa81v7n38) – Daniel F. Case – Moderator, Society of Actuaries – 18p

  • As you know, revolutionary changes are taking place in the life insurance business.
    • To a large extent, these changes have passed regulators by, and have left the regulators in a position of trying to catch up.

—  J. Alan Lauer, Pennsylvania, Deputy Insurance Commissioner, Actuary

1983-1, NAIC Proceedings

  • …  Joseph M. Belth, who taught insurance for many years at Indiana University and publishes the Insurance Forum, a consumer oriented newsletter. 
    • “This is an industry in which various forms of deceptive practices flourish, and the regulators have not done anything about it.
    • Whether this inaction is because they don’t want to do anything or don’t understand or don’t have the resources I am not prepared to say,” Belth said, but he added, “I think it’s a combination” of those things.”

1994 0313 – The Washington Post – Do Life Insurers Foul the Sales Pitch?, By Albert B. Crenshaw  —  [BonkNote]  —  [link]

  • One other issue I did want to touch on is the effort of the NAIC on codification.
  • I’m sure that a lot of you have not paid a lot of attention to codification. It seems like an effort that the accountants are making, that we hope won’t effect us too much. The effort on codification is a very serious and broad effort at the NAIC. The people working on it are not just looking at codifying current practice. They’re also looking at changes.

—  Craig R. Raymond 

1995 – SOA – VASP – Valuation Actuary Symposium Proceedings – Session 2 – Life and Annuity Valuation Issues, VASP952 – Society of Actuaries – 18p

  • Frank S. Irish, ASB, Actuarial Standards Board – The whole process started in the NAIC, as it had to If radical changes in the way we illustrate policies were going to be made, they had to start at the NAIC.
    • Furthermore, the NAIC was being pushed by Senator Howard Metzenbaum who wanted to accuse the regulatory structure of not doing its job and then to bring regulation up to the federal level.

1996 – SOA – Professional Standards Affecting Life Actuaries, Society of Actuaries – 18p

  • Let me begin by reading to you a quote which demonstrates both the desire of State regulators to achieve the uniform licensing standards and the impediments to it:

“The Commissioners are now fully prepared to go before their various legislative committees with recommendations for a system of insurance law which shall be the same in all States – not reciprocal, but identical; not retaliatory, but uniform.”

  • This statement expressing the clear desire for a uniform insurance regulatory system was made by Mr. George W. Miller, the New York Insurance Commissioner who founded the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Mr. Miller made this statement at the end of the very first meeting of the NAIC in 1871. Since then the NAIC has been working for 130 years to achieve some form of regulatory uniformity. I wish they could have solved the problem, but they clearly have not.

—  Sue Kelly (R-NY) – Letter – 3p

2001 0516 – GOV (House) – NARAB And Beyond, Richard Baker (R-LA) – [PDF-79p, VIDEO-?] 

  • No one could deny that State insurance commissioners have a poor record when it comes to market conduct oversight of the insurance industry, and consumers have been abused as a result.
  • We could go through many examples.  (p13)

It is hard to fix a system that has not been analyzed.  (p14)

  • There should be suitability rules in place, particularly for cash value life insurance policies to assure that sales of proper products are made.  (p14)

—  J. Robert Hunter, Director of Insurance, Consumer Federation of America (CFA)

2003 0506 – GOV (House) – Increasing the Effectiveness of State Consumer Protection, Sue W. Kelly (R-NY)  —  [BonkNote]

  • Most state insurance regulators generally only conduct investigations of insurance company sales practices when they receive customer complaints.
    • Although some state insurance regulators review insurance companies’ product sales practices as part of market conduct reviews, few insurance products are subject to any suitability or appropriateness standards.  (p11)

2005 11 – GAO – Financial Product Sales: Actions Needed to Better Protect Military Members, Government Accountability Office – 88p

  • Ed Royce (R-CA) – So we have the SEC. We have the Fed. We have the OCC that all serve to get financial instruments to represent the interests of the banking industry in terms of gaining access to markets overseas, and you are speculating that the National Association of Insurance Commissioners is not going to have that same clout or seat at the table in terms of opening those markets for competition?
  • ACLI – Christopher M. Condron, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company, on behalf of the American Council of Life Insurers
    • They just cannot. You know, they cannot agree on what the reserving requirements will be on universal life insurance policies, or when they do agree, they cannot get all of the States to go along, and that is the frustration, I think, Commissioner Bell and all of the commissioners have always had with the NAIC.

2007 1003 – GOV (House) – The Need for Insurance Regulatory Reform, Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) – [PDF-163p, VIDEO-?] 

  • Michael Lovendusky, association general counsel for ACLI, described the NAIC as a conflicted 137-year-old organization and a 13-year-old organization.
    • The older NAIC, he said, worked well with the insurance industry.
    • “That cooperative effort is being destroyed in ways we don’t understand,” he said, noting that the younger NAIC often fails to have discussions with the industry.
    • That results in insurance groups going on a “scavenger hunt” to seek information as to what NAIC business is conducted behind closed doors, he noted.

2008 0604 – InsuranceJournal.com – Insurers Blast Insurance Regulators as Closed to Open Dialogue, By Patricia-Anne Tom – [link]

  • YPFS: Since AIG is an insurance company, what was the role of the insurance regulators and their interaction with the Fed during this time?
    • Tom Baxter: The insurance commissioners really didn’t help the rescue of AIG, but they didn’t harm it either.

2018 1120 – Yale – YPFS – Lessons Learned Oral History Project Interview: Thomas Baxter, General Counsel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York  —  [BonkNote]  —  19p