WASHINGTON–The U.S. House passed by voice vote late Wednesday legislation recreating the National Association of Registered Agents and Brokers.
However, the bill’s hope of being enacted is unclear because there are no signs of support in the Senate, according to industry lobbyists.
The bill is the National Association of Registered Agents and Brokers Reform Act of 2009 or NARAB II (H.R. 2554), which would simplify the producer licensure process.
But the bill has lukewarm support in the insurance industry.
Peter Ludgin, the executive director of Agents for Change, which supports legislation that would create an optional federal charter for insurers, contends that “the legislation does not go far enough and is a piecemeal approach to a system-wide problem.”
Officials of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors called passage of the bill “a step in the right direction” for simplifying agent licensing.
Tom Currey, NAIFA’s president, said the majority of NAIFA members are licensed in multiple states “and keeping up with the licensing requirements of each state are often redundant and costly.”
He said, “NAIFA is proud to support NARAB II because it just makes sense to eliminate unnecessary costs and duplicative regulation that make it more difficult to serve the clients that depend on us.”
The legislation would recreate a provision of the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that was designed to reestablish the national registration of insurance agents as a nonprofit corporation to allow for agent reciprocity.