A team at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners is working on an update of the standard Life Insurance Buyer's Guide.
The NAIC's Life Insurance Buyer's Guide Working Group held one conference call meeting on the topic earlier this month and scheduled a second conference call meeting for Feb. 7.
The group has posted an example of a life insurance calculator on its section of the NAIC's website, a consumer guide prepared by the American Council of Life Insurers, and one regulator's proposed revision of the existing NAIC guide.
The NAIC is a Kansas City, Missouri-based group for state insurance regulators. It has no direct authority to change state insurance regulations and procedures, but states can choose to use NAIC models as the basis for creating their own laws, regulations, consumer publications and technical guidance materials.
Regulators have been talking about updating the buyer's guide at NAIC meetings for months.
In April, for example, participants in a Life Insurance and Annuities Committee session at an in-person NAIC meeting in New Orleans said the American Academy of Actuaries wanted to see the NAIC rewrite the guide. The ACLI told the committee it would not necessarily mind seeing the NAIC rewrite the guide, according to the meeting minutes.
Some regulators and consumer group reps have talked about wanting to update the guide to modernize it and make it more useful to consumers.
Birny Birnbaum, a consumer rep with the Center for Economic Justice, said he would like to see the guide contain more plan-specific information.
Originally published on lifehealthpro.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached at [email protected], through X at @Think_Allison, and through LinkedIn.