Any adviser selling life insurance and/or annuities must be licensed with their state’s Department of Insurance, which can vary greatly from state-to-state.
Contact information for each state’s insurance department can be found here.
With insurance departments, the resources and compliance can sometimes be more relaxed in some states than others.
An insurance department’s website can be a valuable source of information. On most websites, you can research whether or not an insurance representative is licensed or not. Information like this is extremely important because a representative must be licensed in the state where the insurer works for lives.
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Also, you may be able to research their education history.
As with any field, a practitioner who is up to date on the latest technique will most likely be more proficient than others.
Variable life insurance is a type of permanent life insurance, which allows you to allocate a portion of your premium dollars into a separate account within the insurance company’s portfolio such as stocks, bonds, equity funds and money market funds.
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), who is generally tougher with the representatives that they oversee, also regulates these types of policies.
On the FINRA website, you can research whether or not an insurance representative is licensed or not.
With variable life insurance policies, representatives must be licensed with both the FINRA and the state insurance department since these policies tend to be more complex.
The FINRA also maintains the qualification, employment and disclosure histories of more than half a million registered security employees of member firms.
For an overview of all the current services that the FRNA provides to investors, click here. The list of services is quite lengthy.
Tony Steuer is an author and advocate for financial preparedness. Tony Steuer, CLU, LA, CPFFE, helps people make sense of the financial world in a way that’s easy for them to understand. His books including, “GET READY!,” “Insurance Made Easy,” and “Questions and Answers on Life Insurance,” have won numerous awards. Tony is the founder of the GET READY! Initiative which includes the GET READY! financial organization system, the GET READY! Financial Preparedness Club, GET READY! Podcast, and the GET READY! Financial Principles, a best practices playbook for the financial services industry. Tony served as long-term member of the California Department of Insurance Curriculum Board. Tony is regularly featured in the media including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Fast Company, and other media. He has also appeared as a guest on television shows, such as ABC’s “Seven on Your Side.” Visit https://tonysteuer.com/ to join the GET READY! Financial Preparedness Club and access free resources.