1981 0331 - NYT - Talking Business with Max Karl of MGIC; Home Building And the Future, by Michael Quint - [link]
Max Karl: Besides insurance guaranteeing repayment of principal, I think the day is coming when insurance companies will offer policies guaranteeing the timing of interest and principal payments.
1982 0809 - NYT - 'Growing Equity' Mortgages, by Michael Quint - [link]
GNMA, GEM, FHLB, Merrill Lynch, Lewis S. Ranieri, managing director at Salomon Brothers, USAA (Mr. Roth)
1991 0108 - NYT - Talking Business with Kramer, Author of Insurance Study; Comparing Risks: Banks vs. Insurers, by Michael Quint - [link]
A recent study commissioned by the Insurance Information Institute, "Rating the Risks, Assessing the Solvency Threat in the Financial Services Industry," concluded that the insurance industry's problems were not nearly so severe as those in banking. Orin S. Kramer, a consultant based in New York, discussed the study, which he wrote.
Q. Is a solvency crisis likely for any of the three industries you studied?
A. It is important to distinguish between theoretical possibilities and realistic probabilities. While I can imagine conditions that might produce insolvency for a major insurance company, I think that is extremely improbable over the next several years, and a generalized insurance solvency crisis is even less likely.
1993 1228 - NYT - New Refunds for Misled MetLife Customers, (discussing the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company's involvement in such practices), by Michael Quint - [link]
Metropolitan will move back toward more central control through the training of new employees, Mr. Kamen said.
In the company's sales force of 13,000, turnover is high enough to require the training of about 4,000 to 5,000 new people each year. Under the new policies, training will still take place locally, but will follow more closely a model designed by headquarters.
Mr. Kamen also said the company's Tampa office should have attracted more management attention because of peculiarities in the policies it sold. For example, 85 percent of the policies sold from Tampa were for odd dollar amounts, and not in the multiples of $10,000 that is common for life insurance, while the premiums were even amounts, not the odd amounts calculated to the last penny for most insurance policies.
At other Metropolitan offices, the combination of odd insurance amounts and even premium payments -- often a sign that insurance is being sold as an investment -- occurs in only about 8 percent of new policies, the company said.
1994 0202 - NYT - New York State Warns Insurers, by Michael Quint - [link]
The New York State Insurance Department warned life insurance companies yesterday that if they failed to control their agents and stop improper advertising, the department could require that some companies submit advertising for approval before use.
Although no other company has been accused of improper sales tactics on the same scale as Metropolitan's Tampa office, the industry is worried that the Metropolitan affair could be the catalyst for new Federal regulation.
In addition to Metropolitan's activities, there have been long-simmering complaints about agents using misleading examples to show financial benefits of life insurance.
1994 0308 - NYT - Regulators Seek Limits On Insurer Sales Pitches, by Michael Quint - [link]
NAIC, Illustrations,
State insurance regulators are moving closer to sharply limiting how sales agents may describe the future benefits of life insurance policies, despite strong objections from insurance companies and agents.
The rule is intended to curb the widespread use by agents of computer printouts of insurance policy benefits that exaggerate how the policy's value grows as the company pays dividends to the holder. When interest rates declined in the last five years, many projections made in earlier years proved to be far too optimistic.
The insurance commissioners are not expected to recommend the proposal as a law that states should pass until June. But for now, Mr. Lyons said, "the public's and the politicians' perceptions of sales abuses have been so raised that people are ready to accept more radical approaches."
Insurance companies have, however, persuaded regulators to change some parts of the proposed rules. One idea, to give consumers the right to sue insurance companies about misleading sales tactics, has been deleted.
William N. Albus, senior general counsel for the National Association of Life Underwriters, which represents life insurance sales agents, said illustrations of future benefits "are essential to explaining how a policy works." He suggested that agents should be allowed to project current dividends into the future and include an example of how a policy would look if its dividends were reduced by one percentage point.
1994 0328 - NYT - Transfers By Insurers Under Fire, (Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH), by Michael Quint - [link]
1994 0501 - NYT - Mischief Under the Travelers Umbrella, By Michael Quint - [link]
"Over the years since Sandy Weill took charge, we have heard talk of cleaning up the old A. L. Williams image," said Alan Press, who, while a competitor as a principal in Press, Fishman & Rappaport, a New York insurance agency, is also a well-known expert on life insurance and a former head of the National Association of Life Underwriters. "But there has never been a fundamental commitment to cleaning up the act."
1994 0629 - NYT - Met Life Is Said to Be Facing U.S. Investigation for Fraud, by Michael Quint - [link]
The inquiry by the United States Attorney's office comes as Met Life has been besieged with lawsuits by former customers contending they were misled, and by former agents who say the company wrongfully terminated their employment.
In one recent suit, a former agent, Robert M. Slade of Happauge, L.I., said the company's unwillingness to distinguish between the misleading sales practices in the Tampa office and tactics of other agents who sold life insurance as a retirement product had opened the door to groundless complaints.
1995 0526 - NYT -6-State Force to Open Inquiry Into Insurance Sales Practices (Prudential Life), By Michael Quint - [link]
1995 0719 - NYT - Taking On Insurance Giants, by Michael Quint - [link]
Ronald R. Parry, a soft-spoken lawyer from Kentucky - Class Actions
Prudential, MetLife, ....Mr. Parry has filed suits against six other insurers, including New York Life, Equitable Life Assurance Society and Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance.
The lawsuits accuse the companies of using misleading sales tactics to sell life insurance as a retirement or savings plan (the same charge that led Met Life to settle the class-action lawsuit and pay a related $20 million fine to state regulators last year). The suits also say there were other misdeeds relating to life insurance sales.
1995 0825 - NYT - New York State Opens 2 Doors On Insurance, by Michael Quint - [link]
Monolines, financial guarantee companies, MBIA
One ruling, which was opposed by some large New York-based insurance companies, allows financial guarantee companies that are best known for insuring municipal bonds to expand into the business of insuring investment contracts issued by insurance companies.
Another ruling, which was favored by some New York insurers, opens the door for them to provide guarantees on interest and principal of investment contracts where the assets backing the contract are controlled by the pension fund, not the insurance company. That arrangement, which protects the pension fund from losses caused by market downturns, has been sold by insurers outside New York and by some banks as a way to earn fees without owning the billions of dollars of investments that would inflate balance sheets.
1995 0719 - NYT - Taking On Insurance Giants, by Michael Quint - [link]
1995 0929 - NYT - Could This Be You?, by Michael Quint - [link]
David Woods and other agents created the Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education, with the convenient acronym of LIFE.