Once again, the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and
Examinations (OCIE) has made variable insurance products an exam
priority.
The SEC announced this priority on February 7 in a 10-page
booklet of OCIE's 2018 priorities that was at least twice as
long as the booklets for the last four years. However, the
additional length doesn't shed much more light on OCIE's
precise interest in variable insurance products. Generally, OCIE
says it will conduct exams of "investment advisers and
broker-dealers that offer services and products to investors with
retirement accounts." More specifically, OCIE says it
"will focus on ... sales of variable insurance
products."
For 2012 and the following years, OCIE announced that variable
insurance products — or, at least, variable annuities —
were an exam priority. The only exception was for 2015.
