Insurers Seek Spread of State Standard to Thwart DOL 401(k) Rule

Opponents of newly proposed US Labor Department retirement advice standards are pushing state insurance regulators to fill in policy gaps of their own to boost their case for more lenient federal-level conduct requirements.

Vermont recently became the latest state to require financial professionals to act in their clients’ best-interest when selling annuities, narrowing the number of states that have failed to adopt this set of National Association of Insurance Commissioners standards to just eight.

Insurers favor best-interest standards of conduct over the DOL’s proposal because they pose the least disruption to their business models by not threatening the commissions brokers ...