Friday, September 06, 2019

Look Out Teachers, LSW Has You In Its Crosshairs

I find all sorts of interesting things on the internet these days. Sometimes they are sent to me in my e-mail inbox, but the item I found and posted below is very different than incentive trips I've seen in the past. What's so different you ask? The following phrase:

"Sales in Individual Retirement Accounts or ERISA governed qualified plans paid on or after June 9, 2017 will not count towards the qualification criteria established for certain incentives." 
This means that insurance agents attempting to sell National Life Group insurance products AND who want to earn a trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina can only qualify for that trip by selling the products outside of IRAs and 401(k) plans (also ERISA 403(b)s).

This puts the crosshairs on two groups of people, those with assets outside of qualified (ERISA) plans (usually senior citizens) and public school employees through their 403(b) and/or 457(b). As I've written in the past, government 403(b) plans are not subject to ERISA and thus NOT subject to the new Department of Labor Fiduciary Rule. Teachers are quite literally not protected. Worse, they are among a shrinking group of people who aren't...which puts them directly in the crosshairs of insurance agents who need to make their quotas.

Be careful out there educators, never work with anyone who is not a fiduciary 100% of the time and who is not willing to put that in writing.



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