By
Reno, Nev.
A pilot for single point of filing for life and annuity products will be given a jump-start with an interstate compact approach that could be fully adopted by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners in September.
The Coordinated Advertising Rate and Form Review Authority is a regulatory effort to streamline product filings by eliminating filing deviations among states.
Terri Vaughan, Iowa insurance commissioner and president of the NAIC, and Frank Fitzgerald, commissioner of the Michigan Office of Finance, Insurance and Securities and co-chair of the new Interstate Compact working group, said that even as the compact takes shape this spring, the NAIC will be speaking with legislators about the approach. The intent is to get the compact on legislatures calendars this fall and to start having it enacted at the beginning of 2003.
Details of the interstate compact approach are still being worked out, but Fitzgerald said that under rare circumstances, a company could opt out of the CARFRA program if it so desired. However, he said, an opt-out would be done along product lines and would have to be for an entire product line.
Currently, the pilot has only tested a term life product filed last September by Prudential Financial, Newark, N.J. Other product lines in the project include flexible premium deferred annuities and Med Supp products as well as individual and term life insurance. Long term care and disability insurance could be added later.
