Annuity Guarantee Filings Can Now Speed Up
June 18, 2010 by Linda Koco
- By LINDA KOCO
Published 6/17/2010
The Interstate Insurance Product Regulation Commission says insurers now can file annuities with guaranteed benefits through the commission’s speed-to-market process.
That will help bring the products to market faster, according to officials at the IIPRC, Washington.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, Kansas City, Mo., created the commission and the Interstate Product Regulation Compact in an effort to help insurers streamline the process of filing new product applications and other forms, by providing one office where an insurer can submit a filing for approval by all of the states that participate in the compact.
Commission members now include insurance regulators from 35 states and Puerto Rico.
The commission now is accepting filings for guaranteed living benefits sold with individual deferred variable annuities, guaranteed minimum death benefits sold with individual deferred variable annuities and guaranteed living benefits sold with individual deferred non-variable annuities.
The commission adopted uniform standards for those benefits in February. Now that the standards are effect, annuity insurers can seek regulatory approval for the benefits through the commission.
Once the commission approves a filing, the insurer can sell the policy in all 36 jurisdictions that belong to commission.
Guaranteed benefits can be filed part of the annuity contract or as a rider, endorsement or amendment, the commission says.
“We continue to round out the extensive types of individual annuity products which may be filed through the IIPRC’s central, standardized filing process,” Mary Jo Hudson, the commission chairman, says in a statement. Hudson is director of the Ohio Department of Insurance.
