The NAIC opened up the model reg, #245. That’s a rare occurrence these days. Its previous iteration was only adopted in 10 states, so I asked Claude why and got this response:
Model #245 is the NAIC’s Annuity Disclosure Model Regulation, and the premise holds up — though the reasons are more structural than substantive.
The scale of it: as of a July 2026 NAIC meeting, the chair of the Life Insurance and Annuities Illustrations Working Group said only 10 states have adopted the illustration provisions contained in Model 245. The NAIC’s own state page for #245 shows most jurisdictions sitting in the “previous version” or “related activity” columns, with a dozen or so at “no current activity.” insurancenewsnet
Why:
No enforcement lever. The NAIC accreditation program covers solvency-related models. Market-conduct and disclosure models like #245 carry no consequence for skipping them, so adoption depends entirely on a department’s appetite. Compare the Best Interest amendments to Model #275, which got broad uptake because of coordinated NAIC, ACLI, and post-DOL-fiduciary-rule pressure.
The contested part is Section 6. The 2011 amendments’ most substantive change was adding standards for fixed and fixed indexed annuity illustrations. Disclosure documents and the Buyer’s Guide were uncontroversial; the illustration standards were not. Many states adopted the front half and left Section 6 alone — the state page flags Alabama and Idaho explicitly as “portions of model.” That partial adoption lands a state outside the Model Adoption column entirely. Lexology
Rulemaking cost and actuarial capacity. It’s a regulation, not a statute, so it goes through APA rulemaking — and in some states the department would need enabling legislation before it could regulate illustrations at all. Indexed annuity illustration standards are actuarially technical, and smaller departments don’t have staff to administer them.
The model kept moving. It was amended in 2011, again as guideline amendments in December 2013, again in 2015, and revised again around 2018–2021 to address participating income annuities. Each revision resets what “most recent version” means, so a state that faithfully adopted the 2011 text gets reclassified as a previous-version state without doing anything wrong. A meaningful share of apparent non-adoption is bookkeeping.
Competitive dynamics. Regulators found that illustrated crediting rates were often, though not always, lower in adopting states than in non-adopting ones — which cuts both ways as an adoption incentive, and gave carriers little reason to lobby for uniform uptake. insurancenewsnet
That patchwork is exactly what’s driving the current effort: the A Committee voted in July 2026 to reopen #245, with reopening the model rather than piecemeal changes being one of the most common recommendations from the 19 comment letters received. Industry commenters have pushed the NAIC to leverage Model 245 with broader state adoption and coordinated updates rather than build a new framework.