CFA’s Plan for Improving Consumer Understanding of Life Insurance and Annuities Products and Strengthening Consumer Protections
CFA has long worked on life insurance and annuities issues. It is developing a plan to expand its work as more resources become available. That plan can be viewed here.
Life insurance and annuities can play an important role in creating financial security, but these products often lack sufficient oversight or protections for consumers. As CFA plans for our future work in this area, we have developed an approach that will focus on increasing consumer knowledge about these products and advocating for additional consumer protection rules and laws.
Through our consumer outreach and education efforts, we will extend the reach of our life insurance rate of return analysis for policyholders, develop consumer guides for life insurance and annuities products, and create a website that will grade current life insurance policies on the market. Through our consumer advocacy efforts, we will develop and propose needed reforms for funeral and burial insurance, examine pricing discrimination against low income customers and consumers of color, and fight for stronger protections for people who buy annuity products. CFA will monitor and weigh in on the life and annuities activities of state and federal regulators, launch reform efforts with our state partners to improve product quality, and ensure that markets are healthy and competitive in a way that benefits consumers and not just the people who sell these products.