In a new report designed to support the Department of Labor’s embattled retirement security rule, Sen. Elizabeth Warren accuses the insurance and annuities industries of paying sales incentives and kickbacks that wind up costing customers billions of dollars.
The report, entitled, “CANCUN, CRUISES AND CASH: How the Department of Labor’s New Retirement Security Rule Would End Insurance Industry Kickbacks that Cost Savers Billions,” is the culmination of an investigation Warren and her staff launched in April.
The report details the findings of investigations into 15 of the largest annuities companies and their use of what Warren describes as kickbacks and perks to push conflicted sales.
The investigation details the travel and cash sales prizes and perks that insurers and annuities companies offer, which Warren alleges creates an impetus for advisors and agents to aggressively push more costly products.
“The industry’s secret kickbacks hurt consumers by incentivizing agents to sell certain products because they will earn a bigger cash bonus or fancier vacation, not because they are in their client’s best interest,” Warren’s invesgtigators wrote.
For instance, one insurer offered its top 10 life insurance agents and top 30 annuity agents a free week-long trip to Sydney, Australia, in March. Other companies' 2024 sales contest prizes included trips to Cancun, Mexico, Venice and an 11-day trip to New Zealand.
The report also lists 15 companies the provide financial incentives for sales, including cash bonuses and higher commission rates—programs.
Warren also faulted insurers and annuities companies for using inadequate disclosures to deflect accusations of unethical sales, as well as their practice of using third-party sales and marketing organizations (SMOs) and field marketing organizations (FMOs) to sidestep responsibility for conflicted sales practices.
Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, has been a vocal supporter of the DOL fiduciary rule, which is designed to protect retirement investors from conflicted advice when they roll over their retirement assets into an annuity or IRA.
The DOL rule was slated to go into effect Sept. 24, but was stayed by two federal courts as a result of lawsuits by the annuities, insurance and broker-dealer industries, as the courts deliberate the rule’s. The DOL has filed notice that it intends to appeal the injunctions.
For the first time, the new rule would have applied a fiduciary standard to insurance agents and even brokers and reps who provide even one-time rollover annuities and IRA recommendations.
Under the rule, any rep or agent who was found to offer conflicted advice that put their own interests before customers’ could have been banned from pursuing rollover business and forced to pay a fine to the IRS.
Without the protections of the DOL fiduciary rule, conflicted advice was projected by the Biden White House in March to cost retirement investors $55 billion over the next decades. Ror those who roll over their retirement savings into annuities, investors could lose another $32.5 billion without the rule, Warren’s investigators claim.
There are too many holes in the current National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) and SEC standards to sufficiently protect consumers, Warren’s investigators allege. Even if companies complied with all existing rules, “they may still be directly or indirectly providing sales incentives that create significant conflicts of interest—which is exactly why the new DOL rule is needed,” investigators wrote, noting that “the current NAIC ‘best interest’ rule is a best interest standard in name only.’”