The producers and others who went to Washington earlier this month to support a bill that would define fixed indexed annuities as insurance products may have lined up about 15 new cosponsors in the House.
Blair O’Connor, legislative affairs committee chair at the National Association for Fixed Annuities, Milwaukee, and chairman of the new Independent Fixed Annuities Agents Council, Sterling Heights, is basing that figure partly on visit reports from FIA fly-in participants.
The fly-in attracted a total of about 100 participants.
Earlier, O’Connor had estimated that fly-in participants had visited about 150 congressional offices.
Organizers have discovered that participants actually visited 55 Senate offices and 170 House offices, O’Connor said.
At least 9 House members have now formally agreed to cosponsor H.R. 2733, the FIA classification bill. Reps. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., and Thomas Price, R-Ga. have introduced the bill together.
In the Senate, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., is the primary sponsor of S. 1389., the H.R. 2733 companion bill, “I think we made a lot of good inroads,” O’Connor says.