Insurer Favors 'Sex' Over 'Gender' in Life Policy Overviews

The current version of that section suggests that an insurer ought to include the "date of birth of insured or insureds" in the policy overview.

Pacific Life has proposed deleting "date of birth of insured or insureds."

"Personally identifying information not necessary to the provision of a policy overview should be deleted from the proposed model revision," the company says.

Pacific Life also has proposed a number of other changes, such as replacing a requirement that a policy overview include the insured's "risk class with a statement as to where the insured can find additional information regarding risk classes" with a requirement that the overview merely give the policyholder's risk class.

Every life insure has a different risk class structure, and getting more details about risk class would require that the insured have access to the insurer's underwriting manual, Pacific Life says.

"For this reason, detailed risk class information would not be a useful consumer comparison tool and should be deleted," the company says. "For policy overview purposes, a simple provision of 'risk class' will indicate basic class distinctions which might be useful to a consumer, e.g., smoker versus non-smoker."

Resources

The Life Insurance Illustration Issues Working Group section of the NAIC website is available here.

The link to the Pacific Life comment letter is in the Meeting Materials section for the July 30 conference call meeting.

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