Papa Has a Brand New Bag
All in the Family – Introducing Family Owned Life Insurance™ (aka FOLI™)
TAKE A CHANCE ON ME! PART II - Embracing the Magic of Private Placement Life Insurance and Private Placement Variable Annuities
RETURN TO FOREVER - What Game Shall We Play Today?
NOWOTNY KNOWS SQUAT! Part IV Using Post-Retirement Medical Plans to Raise AUM and Sell Life Insurance
NOWOTNY ON DEATH AND TAXES EPISODE 35 USING POST-RETIREMENT MEDICAL PLANS TO RAISE AUM
NOWOTNY KNOWS SQUAT! Part 3 Using Malta Pension Plans to Raise AUM and Sell More Life Insurance
NOWOTNY KNOWS SQUAT! Part 2 Using PPLI and PPVA Annuities to Raise Assets Under Management and Sell More Life Insurance
INTRODUCING MALTA SPLIT DOLLAR
WHERE EAGLES DARE-INTRODUCING MALTA SPLIT DOLLAR
Private Placement Life Insurance Discussion Podcast
ISLA DEL ENCANTO - INTRODUCING BORICUA SPLIT DOLLAR
Isla del Encanto-Introducing Boricua Split Dollar
Everything You Need to Know About Beneficiary Designations
THE WONDER YEARS WEBINAR
HEAVEN CAN WAIT
Welcome to the inaugural issue of Insurance Insights, a gathering of notable legal developments and trends relevant to the insurance industry. In this issue, the California Supreme Court covers COVID-19 claims, Georgia...more
A recent slate of class action lawsuits seeks to expand the scope of the Illinois Genetic Information Privacy Act’s (GIPA) prohibition against considering family medical history to life insurance companies. See e.g. Reynolds...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
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed the dismissal of a putative class action against a brokerage firm and its parent company, holding that the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act (SLUSA) barred the...more
California lapse notice litigation has garnered publicity ever since the California Supreme Court in McHugh v. Protective Life Insurance Co. held that the new insurance statutes requiring a 60-day grace period and 30-day...more
Explaining for the first time “who bears what burdens when a class member objects to a proposed settlement,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed in an insurance case a district court’s order approving a...more
The Eleventh Circuit recently affirmed an Alabama district court’s decision granting summary judgment in favor of Allstate Insurance Company in a consolidated ERISA class action challenging Allstate’s decision to stop paying...more
The absence of insurance regulations to limit or deter unlawful cost-of-insurance (“COI”) increases for universal life insurance (“ULI”) policies has resulted in a flurry of class action activity against carriers. Some...more
In Bellon v. PPG Emp. Life & Other Benefits Plan, PPG Industries, Inc. & the PPG Plan Administrator, the Northern District of West Virginia recently addressed whether a predecessor company may be held liable for a decision...more
While challenges to insurers’ exercises of discretion in setting cost of insurance rates has been the principal focus of litigation involving universal life (UL) insurance products for quite some time, a putative class action...more
After years of pursuing life insurers with Cost of Insurance (COI) class actions, we are now seeing a new life insurance secondary market investor strategy — suing life insurers on a class action basis for not paying enough...more
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, dozens of class action lawsuits were filed across a variety of industries in the United States – with theories of liability ranging from hand sanitizer false-labeling allegations,...more
The holidays came early for class action defendants in the Eleventh Circuit. Within just over a month, that court issued two decisions with potentially large consequences for data breach litigation in the Eleventh Circuit:...more
The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York recently issued a decision denying class certification to sub-classes in a cost of insurance (“COI”) class action based upon the insurer’s defense that...more
The first half of 2020 saw an uptick in the filing of class action lawsuits against life insurance companies. Life insurance companies have continued to be the target of putative class actions in California challenging...more
On August 13, 2020, in the putative class action challenging AXA’s COI rate increase on Athena Universal Life II (“AUL II”) policies, Judge Jesse M. Furman of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New...more
The Fed is expected to hold rates steady as its June Open Market Committee meeting wraps today. Analysts expect that the better-than-expected May jobs numbers won’t be nearly enough for the central bank to suggest it is close...more
Like companies in other industries, life, annuity, and securities companies and their affiliates have faced class actions asserting claims under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act....more
Two companion amendments to the California insurance law have received increased attention from the plaintiffs’ bar recently. On January 1, 2013, sections 10113.71 and 10113.72 were enacted to amend the California Insurance...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
No Recovery for Paying Premiums in Excess of Policy Face Amount - Since we last reported on Goostree v. Liberty National Life Insurance Co. in the October 2019 issue of Expect Focus — Life, Annuity, and Retirement Solutions,...more
The Eleventh Circuit recently examined the application of the $5 million amount-in-controversy requirement under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) to disputes over life insurance premiums and policies. It concluded that...more
McClendon v. North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Co. (M.D. Tenn. 2019) - In McClendon, the plaintiff’s mother purchased a whole life insurance policy to insure the plaintiff’s brother, and subsequently took out a loan on...more
May 21, 2019, marks the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, which upheld the use of class action waivers in employee arbitration agreements....more
Individualized defenses and choice-of-law issues played a key role in preventing class certification in a recent challenge to a life insurer’s discretion to adjust its “risk rates” on universal life (UL) insurance policies....more