Pennsylvania Life Insurance Policyowners to Benefit
FORT WASHINGTON, Pa., April 6 /PRNewswire/ -- In a victory for life insurance consumers of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Insurance Department issued a notice (Notice 2005-04) that all licensed life insurance agents can advise and assist policyowners with these secondary market transactions without the requirement of a separate settlement broker examination. The Pennsylvania Insurance Department should be applauded as Pennsylvania joins all but one other state in the nation in recognizing the competence of life agents to assist policyowners with life settlements.
Life settlements enable policyowners to realize the fair market value of their underperforming or unneeded life insurance policies. A life settlement yields significantly more than the cash surrender value offered by a life insurance company - on average four to five times more.
Coventry First, the leader in the secondary market for life insurance and a Pennsylvania-based company, applauded the Department of Insurance action. "Life insurance consumers are best served by their professional insurance advisor, who has access to all of the options that meet the best interest of the policyowner. This action is pro-consumer," said Michael Freedman, Senior Vice President at Coventry First.
The NAIC agrees. At the time the NAIC Model Regulation passed, the NAIC President explained that the nation's insurance commissioners had overwhelmingly rejected the extra licensing concept as duplicative, unnecessary and protectionist. "We do not make life producers get a separate license for cash surrenders, and should not for settlements, either," he continued. Since then, two of the three non-compliant states (Kentucky and Pennsylvania) have reversed their requirements; fittingly, the Pennsylvania bulletin explicitly recognized the NAIC Model as necessitating the change.
Nationally, state insurance commissioners and state legislatures have been clear that they do not want to create unnecessary licensing requirements for life insurance agents. State insurance regulators have been under increasing pressure from Congress and the insurance industry to adopt uniform insurance producer licensing standards.
"This is an important step in the right direction," said Mr. Freedman. "The Department's actions will ensure that certified, trained professionals are participating in secondary market transactions, while freeing up regulatory resources for the enforcement of the important consumer protections found in the Pennsylvania settlement laws."
To find out if your policy can qualify, please visit our free life settlement analysis page.
Soure: Yahoo! Finance
