Staying Up To Date with Record Retention
As a valued partner of American Equity, we appreciate your hard work and accomplishments. Your continued success helps facilitate our own success. In an effort to educate and protect you as you conduct business, we will continue to send you updates about the compliance rules and regulations of our industry. Thank you for your partnership with us.
In today’s world, record retention is important for anyone engaged in any business activities. You may need to access information in the future to assist your clients or to provide information to an insurer or regulator.
For those reasons, every state has adopted specific rules regarding the client documentation you are required to keep. If you are licensed in multiple jurisdictions, the time periods you are required to maintain these records may vary.
Both you and the company are separately required to keep certain customer records, including documents related to the sale, suitability determination and recommendation, replacement and correspondence relating to the solicitation and sale of an insurance or annuity product.
As such, you may be asked by an insurance company, regulatory authority, law enforcement or legal/judicial authorities to provide such information for a variety of reasons and should not rely upon us to provide for you as you must also have your own file that may contain items not required with the application packet.
Additionally, insurance companies have an obligation to ensure its producers have certain processes in place and to subsequently implement procedures to monitor to ensure those processes are followed. This may lead a company to request certain records or documents for verification purposes. Such records may include, but are not limited to the following items:
- Application forms
- Advertisements, sales brochures or any other form used in the direct sale and recommendation of a product to a consumer
- Replacement forms, where applicable
- Illustrations or any other numerical depiction of a product’s performance, including spreadsheets or your handwritten notes
- Correspondence, including letters, emails, etc.
- Any fact finder used
- Suitability forms
- Disclosure forms
You should review the laws in all states where you hold a license to make sure you are keeping copies of the correct documents and keeping them for the appropriate time period. If you choose to create a record retention policy, you should engage a professional who is familiar with both your business and the various record retention requirements placed on your business.