Insurance industry groups are criticizing the Securities and Exchange Commission for closing the comment period for a proposal that would impose federal regulation on indexed annuities.
Leaders of NAFA, Milwaukee, sent the letter as criticism of the proposal was pouring in from other individuals and entities,
Organizations sending the SEC comment letters opposing the proposal and the Sept. 10 comment cut-off include groups such as the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors, Falls Church, Va.; Association for Advanced Life Underwriting, Falls Church; and the National Association for Fixed Annuities, Milwaukee.
The proposal would create a new regulation, Rule 151A, that would classify indexed annuities as securities.
Members of industry groups, and individual life agents representing only themselves, have been sending the SEC letters condemning the proposal after since the SEC announced it in June.
This week, at the NAIFA annual meeting in San Diego, group leaders enlisted members in an effort to write and send many more letters criticizing the proposal.
NAFA Chairman Malott Nyhart asks in the AALU letter whether the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Washington, "really intended to encompass such a broad array of traditional annuity products within the rule."
"In light of the significant legal and economic policy issues at stake, we are extremely disappointed that the SEC chose to seek to move this rule to adoption with only a very narrow window for comment," Nyhart writes.
The new "proposal departs significantly from the SEC's 1997 statement on fixed index insurance products," Nyhart writes.