Meeks-Price Annuity Bill Arrives 

House members have introduced H.R. 2733, a bill that could reverse efforts by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to claim jurisdiction over indexed annuities.

The bill would exempt indexed annuities and indexed insurance policies from regulation by the SEC.

The National Association for Fixed Annuities, Milwaukee, has been awaiting introduction of the bill for weeks, and it announced the arrival of the bill today in a member alert.

Reps. Greg Meeks, D-N.Y., and Tom Price, R-Ga., are the lead sponsors of the bill. They have lined up 20 cosponsors, according to the Library of Congress legislative tracking system.

The bill has been referred to the House Financial Services Committee.

SEC officials and others have argued for years that indexed annuities should be regulated as securities because, from the perspective of consumers, they behave like other products that are regulated by the SEC.

Critics of the SEC counter that indexed annuity issuers offer generous guarantees; back the annuities with their own general account assets; and have sold products that have outperformed SEC-regulated securities in recent months.

More information about the bill is available here.

• • 6/5/2009 3:49:41 PM
  • Jack Halseth
  • HR2733
  • SEC has failed miserably trying to supervise securities. They should not add index annuities (not a security) to their poor performance efforts.
• • 6/5/2009 4:24:12 PM
  • richard h. mayer, clu
  • HR 2733
  • Good development. Proper outcome.
• • 6/10/2009 3:05:16 PM
  • Phil
  • Lembock
  • The current public distrust of banks, brokerages, and insurance companies will cause 2733 to be received with all the approbation of a turd in a swimming pool. It was never intended to emerge from committee and it never will.
• • 6/23/2009 6:12:40 PM
  • Don Braselton
  • Meeks-Price Annuity Bill
  • I have not read the bill, which is probably what 90% of the Congressmen do, but I appreciate the important of keeping annuities within the scope of insurance only, because it is a guarantted insurance product. The SEC has already proven that it cannot, or will not do already what it should do, or should have done, to oversee and stop securities programs that are built on nothing and secured by nothing and those who create and sell or trade them. Please, insurance agents and brokers want to have oversight by persons of substance and decency! Persons associated with the SEC have not demonstrated those qualities. Commerce in the US deserves better than what the SEC has shown!

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