Andrew Mais to Lead State Insurance Regulators Into Fiduciary Rule Arena

The "future looked bright on a calendar that read … January 2020," Lindley-Myers said. "If that was a movie, you'd hear 'dun, dun, dun!'"

The sales standards: The Labor Department has moved to define anyone who regularly advises people rolling money out of 401(k) plans or other retirement accounts into other financial arrangements as fiduciaries, meaning that they would have to put clients' interests first, offer detailed compensation disclosures, provide detailed justifications for any product recommendations and, possibly, face future legal attacks from clients who are unhappy about investment results.

The NAIC wants financial professionals who sell annuities to retirement savers to abide by its own recently adopted annuity suitability update.

The underlying suitability model requires financial professionals to verify that the annuities offered to clients suit their needs.

The update is designed to wrap around the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Regulation Best Interest. Annuity advisors who come under the standard must show that they have acted in clients' best interest.

Groups that have supported adoption of fiduciary standard regulations, such as the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, have generally expressed skepticism about the NAIC's approach.

Many insurers and groups representing life insurance companies and life insurance agents have supported the NAIC's approach.

Incoming president: Connecticut, the state in which Mais is the top insurance regulator, has supported the NAIC approach. In 2021, it became the 16th jurisdiction to adopt the NAIC suitability model update.

Mais, who came into insurance regulation through work as a communicator, has a bachelor's degree in organizational behavior from Yale.

He served for six years as the host of a weekly political talk show in Connecticut, then worked for five years as director of public affairs and research at New York state's insurance department.

He then was part of the insurance regulation-tracking team at Deloitte before receiving an appointment to be Connecticut's insurance commissioner in 2019.

Andrew Mais. Credit: Connecticut Insurance Department