Life Insurance Consumer Advocacy Center

The Supreme Court’s decision not to grant review of the Court of Appeal decision awarding a victory for the policyholder is good news for Mr. Williams, who was tricked into buying unsuitable annuities by an unscrupulous agent. (See prior blog posts below.)  But the Supreme Court’s decision to depublish the Court of Appeal opinion is…

On March 4, 2022, the California Court of Appeal issued a published opinion ruling that an insurance company was liable for the misconduct of its agent even though the agent was an independent agent who violated his contract with the insurer as well as many of the insurer’s rules and procedures.  LICAC has covered the…

On September 22, 2021, the California Supreme Court granted review of the anti-consumer decision in Williams v. National Western Life Insurance Company, which held that an agent who sold for multiple life insurers was the agent of the consumer, not the insurer, and that the insurer owed no duty of care to supervise the agent. …

The Life insurance Consumer Advocacy Center (“LICAC”) has added an additional protection to the Life Insurance Consumers’ Bill of Rights that it proposed  on September 18, 2020.  (See September 18, 2020 blog post) The new provision would overrule a recent California court case which held that an agent selling life insurance on commission for a…

A June 2021 decision from a California appellate court held than an insurance company had no duty of care to supervise its agent and therefore was not liable for the agent’s misconduct, egregious as it was.  See Williams v. National Western Life Insurance Company, Case No. C090436 (Third Appellate District, June 11, 2021)  https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6723238997375948811&q=williams+v.+national+western+life+insurance&hl=en&as_sdt=2006  …

A working paper released in 2021 and soon to be published in the Stanford Law Review, entitled Regulatory Arbitrage and the Persistence of Financial Misconduct, shows that financial advisors who exit the broker-dealer regulatory regime because of misconduct frequently become (or remain licensed as) insurance producers, where they are more than ten times as likely…

Insurance regulators have put into effect – presumed effective after Dec. 14, 2020 – more conservative rules for illustrating the popular index-based Universal Life policies sold by dozens of life insurance carriers.  Revising illustration rules was last attempted in late Summer of 2015 via Actuarial Guideline 49 (AG49), but newer products and their illustrated projections…

The Life insurance Consumer Advocacy Center (“LICAC”) has proposed a bill entitled the Life Insurance Consumers’ Bill of Rights, with the goal of protecting consumers from losing their savings in Life Insurance Investment Schemes.  The concept for the bill was first discussed with representatives of the California Department of Insurance in February 2020.  The reforms…

In the Spring of 2020, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (“NAIC”) adopted a new “model regulation” that purports to protect consumers by toughening the standards that must be followed by agents and insurers selling annuities to consumers.[1]  The new model regulation, called the Suitability in Annuity Transactions Model Regulation (No. 275), was met with…