WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, CHIP HILTON?
Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Investment Management Roundtable Discussion – Personal Estate Planning
In Ross v. Venerable Insurance & Annuity Co., a Missouri appellate court reversed judgment in favor of the named beneficiary of a flexible premium deferred annuity contract. Following the annuitant’s death, the beneficiary...more
Regulators Hit Jackpot: Off-Channel Communications - Several years before announcing the first “off-channel” communications enforcement action, the SEC and FINRA cautioned broker-dealers and investment advisers about...more
Court Emphasizes Disclosure Substance Over Form - A recent decision in Nofsinger v. Jackson National Life Insurance Co. shut down a putative class action in which the plaintiff alleged she surrendered her annuity contract...more
Recycled structured settlement payment streams have been the subject of much concern and scrutiny the past few years. These recycled payment streams are structured settlement annuity payments that were sold to a factoring...more
Life insurers bid farewell to a fairly moderate year of class action litigation. Although several class actions were filed against life insurers in the last quarter of 2019, the filings were reflective of the litigation...more
In a recent decision by a New Jersey district court partially denying a motion to dismiss, the characterization of individual indexed annuities as installment contracts had a significant impact on the potential liability of...more
In yet another warning to buyers of structured settlement payment rights on the secondary market, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed the District Court’s order for summary judgment in favor of...more
Capitol Life Insurance Co. partially prevailed, and partially failed, its effort to overturn unfavorable grants of summary judgment in a recent dispute regarding an annuity policy written by Capitol....more
As we previously reported, in September 2017, a federal district court in Louisiana dismissed with prejudice as time-barred putative class action RICO and state racketeering claims related to alleged wrongful conduct by an...more
In May, the Southern District of California handed ING a win in a case involving allegations that the company targeted seniors with annuities that hid an embedded derivative structure that made them worth less than promised....more
On March 31, in Chambers v. N. American Co. for Life & Health Ins., an action alleging RICO violations and other claims in the sales of deferred annuities to seniors, the Southern District of Iowa granted the insurer’s motion...more
The Volcker Rule Under the Trump Administration - The so-called Volcker Rule—named after Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board—was part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection...more
Recent federal court decisions effectively terminated two class action lawsuits challenging indexed annuity sales, seemingly ending an extended wave of class litigation in the federal courts against multiple insurers...more
The creative theories of liability and damages on display in the recent certification of multiple classes suggest that the long run of annuity class actions is not over yet. Plaintiff in Abbit v. ING USA Annuity and Life...more
The Southern District of California recently certified California and multistate classes of annuities purchasers in a case challenging the allegedly abusive design, execution, and pricing of fixed index annuities (FIA). The...more
The Department of Labor’s recent Proposed Rule, which defines the term "fiduciary" as it applies to persons who provide "investment advice" to ERISA plans and IRAs, will impact the likelihood and severity of fiduciary...more