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June 21, 2001 at 08:00 PM
By
New Orleans
Regulators say the National Association of Insurance Commissioners could replace a key life insurance mortality table by the end of the year.
Replacing the 1980 Commissioners Standard Ordinary life insurance mortality table with the 2001 CSO table could lead to tax problems and other headaches for some companies, meeting participants acknowledged here at the NAICs summer meeting.
But an update would also eliminate the difficulties involved with using an outdated table to calculate reserve requirements reduce reserve requirements by about 20%, participants predicted.
“Insurers just cant have an ancient mortality table,” said Tom Herget, executive vice president at PolySystems Inc., Chicago, a valuation software company.
A CSO table task force at the American Academy of Actuaries, Schaumburg, Ill., is developing the table and a draft regulation that could be used to implement the table.
The NAIC has agreed to expose the table and the draft regulation for public comment by July 15. The Kansas City, Mo.-based association hopes to put the table and the draft regulation on the agenda in December, at the NAICs winter meeting.
The new mortality table addresses mortality for men, women, smokers and nonsmokers. The table also gives figures for a composite insured, along with figures for issue ages from birth to 99 years and attained ages from birth to 120 years.
The minimum statutory reserves set forth in the proposed table should be sufficient to cover claims 85% of time, according to Paul Skalecki, the academy task force co-chair.
The new requirements would cut reserve levels about 20% and “increase policyholder value without sacrificing reasonable solvency protection,” Skalecki said.
The draft regulation that might be used to implement the new CSO table would require 26 states to adopt the new table before the table would begin taking full effect. Once 26 states adopted the regulation, the table would become the state prevailing table for tax reserves under Section 807 of the Internal Revenue Code, according to Bill Carroll, a life actuary with the American Council of Life Insurers, Washington.
If, for example, the NAIC adopted the table and the regulation by Dec. 31, 15 states adopted the regulation in 2002 and 15 more states adopted the regulation in 2003, the table would become part of the tax code in 2003.
Under the code, a three-year transition period would follow, Carroll said.
Starting three years after the table became part of the states tax code, all policies would be required to use the new table.
One question that cropped up at the NAIC meeting was the length of the transition period.
