California Life Insurance Policies 4hr Course

This 4-hour course meets the state requirements for the mandatory life insurance continuing education course, and is based on the content outline provided by the state of California. The course includes important information for those in the life insurance business, including the life insurance training requirements and disclaimer, the curriculum including types of individual life policies and the course training goals,and  life insurance sales practices with associated prohibitions and penalties. 

Specifically, the course explores the following: 

• The life insurance training requirements, including applicable California law and related mandates; 
• Different types of life insurance policies, including whole life insurance,universal life, premium options, variable whole life, fixed universal life, no cash value in term insurance with certain exceptions, endowment insurance, modified endowment contracts (MECs), funeral/burial insurance, and disability benefits in life insurance policies; 
• Accelerated death benefits and qualifiers for the benefit, long-term care definitions and associations with life insurance, long-term care insurance training, understanding different types of premium payments, identifying rights to cancel the policy and requirements for insureds age 60 and older, notices and requirements for replacing life insurance policies, and life insurance illustrations; 
• Policy delivery and its ramifications, life insurance settlement contracts, their purpose and suitability guidelines, various common provisions of life insurance, including free-looks, grace periods, dividends, surrenders of cash values, beneficiaries and their designations, the Common Disaster and Uniform Simultaneous Death Act provisions, spendthrift clause, policy loans, exclusions including suicide and more; 
• Lapse notices, the right to designate another person to receive notice of lapse, the three nonforfeiture options, death benefit settlement options and why a person may select a particular option; 
• Life insurance taxation issues, including premium payments, cash value accumulations, dividends, settlement options, Internal Revenue Code Section 1035 regarding policy exchanges, modified endowment contract tax concerns and their effect on the policy; 
• Sales practices expected of agents and insurers, including suitability requirements, the producer’s legal and ethical obligations to consumers, the types of information to be gathered to determine suitability, identifying product features and circumstances that may make a policy either suitable or unsuitable, processes in place to audit and supervise producer activities, laws that protect senior citizens, violations of law, prohibited and unfair trade practices, and the penalties associated with violations; 
• Business management practices, including prohibited actions, accounting and financial management including trust accounts and their maintenance, business budgeting, income and expense ratios, information and database management, recordkeeping, privacy laws, and other legal requirement for the use of information, human resource management, and more; 
• Unfair trade practices: Prohibitions, definitions and examples, licensing rules and penalties, terms including coercion, boycott, false information and advertising, rebating, illegal inducements, “free” insurance, defamation, discrimination, and unfair financial planning practices; 
• Penalties for violations, specifically the California code sections that prohibit certain acts by unlicensed persons and the related disciplinary actions, written consent required for those in the insurance business whose activities affect interstate commerce (United States Civil Code 18, Sections 1033 and 1034), penalties for acting for an nonadmitted insurer, the application of the Unfair Practices Article and that the Commissioner is the only person who may enforce provisions of the Unfair Practices Act and may also conduct hearings and investigations, the privacy protections afforded by Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the California Financial Information Privacy Act, and the notice requirements and penalties associated with replacement of life insurance and annuities. 

There is a 20-question final exam that must be passed in order to receive certification for the course.