Regulating Fast Life Underwriting Should Be Fast: Consumer Rep

A consumer group representative says the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) should speed up efforts to develop model regulations for the new fast life insurance underwriting efforts.

(Related: New York Regulators Roll Eyes at ‘Proprietary’ Accelerated Life Underwriting)

Birny Birnbaum, executive director of the Center for Economic Justice, has told members of the NAIC’s Accelerated Underwriting Working Group in a letter that they are spending too much time gathering information and going over issues that other NAIC teams have looked at in the past, according to draft minutes from an Oct. 2 working group conference call meeting.

The working group has included the draft minutes in a packet of materials for an in-person session set to take place Dec. 8 in Austin, Texas, at the NAIC’s fall national meeting.

During the conference call meeting, Birnbaum asked working group members to consider moving more quickly than what the working group has proposed in a work plan.

Birnbaum said the consumer issues stemming from accelerated underwriting are well-known, according to the draft minutes.

Doug Ommen, the Iowa insurance commissioner, said the Accelerated Underwriting Working Group needs somewhat different information than other NAIC teams working on accelerated underwriting.

The other NAIC teams have been focusing on issues related to the financial performance of policies written using accelerated underwriting methods, Ommen said.

The Accelerated Underwriting Working Group is supposed to focus on whether the consumers affected by accelerated underwriting are being treated fairly, rather than on solvency, Ommen said.

Resources

A link to the materials packet for the Dec. 8 working group session is available here, under the Meeting Materials tab.

— Read 5 Questions About Life Insurance for 2019, on ThinkAdvisor.

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