WASHINGTON—California has moved to streamline someagent-licensing provisions, but the new law does not address apriority of agents and brokers: uniform licensing laws throughreciprocity.
|A.B. 1416, signed Oct. 2 by Gov. Jerry Brown, ends the need forstate regulators to review the articles of incorporation forinsurers that are incorporated in other states or nations. Itpassed the legislature with strong bipartisan backing Sept. 6.
|It also makes several changes in law relating to insuranceproducer licenses, including clarifying the bond requirement for anagent or broker who holds both property and casualty licenses.
|According to officials at the California Insurance Department,legislation enacted last year that created the two license typeswas unclear on the bonding requirements and, as written, the lawcould be interpreted that a separate bond was required for eachlicense. AB 1416 clarifies that only one bond is required, theofficials say.
|The law goes into effect in January.
|However, the new law does not reflect a change in policy forreciprocal licensing of individual agents and brokers inCalifornia, as proposed in the National Association of RegisteredAgents and Brokers Reform Act.
|That bill was reintroduced in March by Rep. Randy Neugebauer,R-Texas, and Rep. David Scott, D-Ga.
|Both life and P&C insurance agents support such legislation,which would create standardization of agent licensing. The issuehas been around for more than 10 years.
|Such a provision was included in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of1999, but the effort failed because large states such as Californiadeclined to support it.
|Industry officials declined to comment for the record but statedprivately that this new bill does not represent a change inposition by California officials.
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