October 13, 2008
Without question, the appropriate state insurance regulatory authorities with jurisdiction should punish sales agents who provide deliberate, false, misleading or fraudulent information to seniors just to make sales. But please don't start mischaracterizing facts or process as a means to prosecute. Use current law. And don't punish the thousands of innocent agents who behave appropriately.
A fixed annuity that pays interest based on a given index is still a fixed annuity. To use the "logic" proposed under Rule 151 on fixed annuities would not only be irrational, but it would open the door to all sorts of convoluted definitions of commonly accepted terminology. For example, if my mortgage interest rate is tied to a given index such as the LIBOR or a certain federal district in California, does that make my lender subject to British Law or make me, a Texan, subject to California law? No. And an annuity that pays interest based on an index does not make that annuity a security.