Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Why I Dropped My Series 6: Reason #4,392

In addition to their "regular" insurance license requirements, agents who sell variable (ie securities-based) products must also have special licenses regulated by the Feds. These kinds of products would be mutual funds, and variable life insurance policies and annuities.

They do not (currently) include equity-indexed products (but don't be surprised...)

In the event, I used to hold such a license, and sold a few variable policies (and a handful of mutual funds, mostly as pre-HIPAA HSA vehicles ). After a short while, I realized that I didn't enjoy all the extra bookkeeping, accounting, and research that went with that territory, to say nothing of fielding the calls from clients unnerved by the vagaries of Wall Street. So, I turned it in and never looked back.

And boy, am I ever glad I did:

"Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. communications record retention rules apply to all communications devices and technologies ... [including] member firms’ use of social networking websites and personal communications devices."

Yup: Twitter, FaceBook and text all count (no word yet on sexting or MySpace).

That means all those little messages buried in your BlackBerry or iPhone memory, and heaven help you if you delete older ones to recapture storage space.

Beep-beep.
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