Securities and Exchange Commission May 2020 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Securities and Exchange Commission is adopting rule and form amendments intended to help investors make informed investment decisions regarding variable annuity and variable life insurance contracts. The amendments modernize disclosures by using a layered disclosure approach designed to provide investors with key information relating to the contract's terms, benefits, and risks in a concise and more reader-friendly presentation, with access to more detailed information available online and electronically or in paper format on request. New rule 498A under the Securities Act of 1933 will permit a person to satisfy its prospectus delivery obligations under the Securities Act for a variable annuity or variable life insurance contract by sending or giving a summary prospectus to investors and making the statutory prospectus available online. The rule also will consider a person to have met its prospectus delivery obligations for any portfolio companies associated with a variable annuity or variable life insurance contract if the portfolio company prospectuses are posted online. To implement the new disclosure framework, we are also amending the registration forms for variable annuity and variable life insurance contracts to update and enhance the disclosures to investors in these contracts, and to implement the proposed summary prospectus framework, and adopting amendments to our rules that will require variable contracts to use the Inline eXtensible Business Reporting Language (``Inline XBRL'') format for the submission of certain required disclosures in the variable contract statutory prospectus. The Commission is also taking the position that if an issuer of a discontinued contract that is discontinued as of July 1, 2020 that provides alternative disclosures does not file post-effective amendments to update a variable contract registration statement and does not provide updated prospectuses to existing investors, this would not provide a basis for enforcement action so long as investors are provided with the alternative disclosures or modernized alternative disclosures described below. We are also adopting certain technical and conforming amendments to our rules and forms, including amendments to rules relating to variable life insurance contracts, and rescinding certain related rules and forms.