Insurance Regulators, Securities Regulators Come Together

Worlds collided here just before the summer meeting of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

NAIC members met here at an annual seminar with representatives from the securities regulation sector.

In sessions at the seminar and in interviews with National Underwriter, experts who talked about issues that cross sector boundaries include James Wrona, a counsel at the National Association of Securities Dealers, Washington, Joseph Borg, the Alabama securities director and president of the North American Securities Administrators Association, Washington; and North Dakota Insurance Commissioner Jim Poolman.

Poolman has been talking with securities regulators about the NAIC’s new Viatical Settlements Model Act.

Wrona talked about a proposed NASD rule, Proposed Rule 2821, that would cover the sales and supervision practices used in the sale of deferred variable annuities.

The proposed rule would require a registered rep to have a reasonable basis for offering a deferred variable annuity, rather than another type of product, and the rep would have to make the consumer aware of product characteristics such as surrender periods, tax penalties, and mortality and expense fees, Wrona said.