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Saturday 25 November 2017

Indexed products


Indexed products, especially Indexed Universal Life (IUL) products, have become so popular that the New York Department of Financial Services is investigating the marketing of IULs. The American Council of Life Insurers is also working to find ways to better inform consumers. This session is intended to provide an overview of how indexed products work, the various options available to producers and an update of the latest product innovations. It will also include information on the regulatory scrutiny of indexed products and how advisors can navigate these waters, going forward.

INDEXED LIFE INSURANCE PRODUCTS

INDEXED LIFE INSURANCE PRODUCTS
(A) INTRODUCTION
This bulletin informs life insurers about the Department’s handling of all indexed life insurance products and provides certain requirements for the sale of these products. These contracts are life insurance products where non-guaranteed additional credited interest is based upon a formula that is tied to data or an index outside the contract. Insurance companies frequently use the Standard and Poor’s 500 index. Insurance companies could use other indexes such as the Lehman Brothers’ index. Contract values can vary based upon the performance of the investment markets and the chosen index. The application of the index or outside data to the contract values can vary greatly from contract to contract.
The purpose of the requirements in this bulletin is to insure that insurance companies provide adequate disclosure to promote consumer understanding of this product.
(B) PRODUCT TRAITS
All products must have the following distinguishing characteristics:
1) the products shall be sold by a licensed insurance agent or procured by a licensed insurance broker,
2) non group contracts shall contain the minimum guarantees required by Vermont’s Standard Nonforfeiture law, and
3) sales brochures and promotional literature shall not focus solely on the investment aspects of this product and shall emphasize the primary purpose of insurance and long term focus of the product.
(C) REQUIRED FOR APPROVAL
The filing of an indexed life insurance product shall contain a draft or final copy of a buyers guide. The insurer is free to use their own language in the buyers guide providing it is easy to read and understand. The company is free to use its own format in the guide. The insurer shall provide the Department with a Flesch test score certificate of 50 or greater for the buyer’s guide.
As with all filings made in Vermont the insurer shall supply:
1) a filing fee of $50.00 per filing per company,
2) stamped addressed return envelope to receive notice of our action,
3) stamped self addressed acknowledgment envelope, (optional) to receive our file number, prior to our review,
4) two copies of the cover letter,
5) a Flesch test certificate,
6) one copy of the contract,
7) appropriate actuarial memo, and
8) a microfiche.
(D) REQUIREMENTS FOR INDEXED LIFE INSURANCE BUYER’S GUIDE
1) The insurer shall display in the buyer’s guide the index values for at least the most recent five years and the change in the index per year expressed as a percentage.
2)The buyer’s guide should caution the buyer that the illustrations do not imply future performance.
3) If caps, participation ratios, or any other features are used to limit the growth of policy values, a description of the feature(s) and a listing of the current caps, and or ratios imposed by the insurance company or other limiting feature(s) shall be disclosed in the buyer’s guide.
4) The buyer’s guide shall disclose how frequently the caps, ratios, or other features limiting growth in policy values will change.
5) The Buyer’s guide shall disclose the use of a “ratchet” feature. As used in this paragraph ratchet feature is one that locks in to the contract all index related gains. The buyer’s guide shall disclose the frequency and degree of guarantee of “ratchet” feature gains.
6) The buyer’s guide should caution the reader that (1) the product illustrated in the buyer’s guide is designed to be held for a long period of time and (2) holding the product for a short period of time is not in the best interest of the buyer or the insurance company.
7) If the death benefit is not subject to the index adjustment, the buyer’s guide shall disclose this fact.
8) For individual life insurance products, the buyer’s guide shall inform the buyer that the contract values will never go below the minimum nonforfeiture values.
(E) INDEXED LIFE PRODUCT REQUIREMENTS
1) In addition to the customary requirements, the filing shall include an actuarial
statement signed by an actuary. This statement shall demonstrate compliance with Vermont standard non-forfeiture law and explain the mechanics of the contract.
2) The contract description on page one shall contain the word "indexed" to describe the contract. Other words can be used with the approval of the Department.
3) The insurer shall provide the Department with a copy of a buyer’s guide or informational material which provides a description of the index used and a description of how it is applied.
4) The insurer shall warrant to the Department that, if the insurer decides to change the index used with a product, it will submit the change to the Department for approval prior to using it.
5) The index shall be widely quoted and available to buyers on most business days in the United States through a widely distributed publication. The insurance company shall disclose to the Department the name of the publication that publishes the index.
6) The application of the index to the contract values shall be established in advance at least one year.
7) Long term illustrations can not be used to imply future performance. On the other hand, demonstrations of at least the most recent five years of policy mechanics under both positive and negative market conditions may be used to further understanding of the policy.
8) Caps, ratios, or other features limiting growth in policy values shall be guaranteed for at least a year. The buyer’s guide shall disclose how frequently they will change.
9) If the policy has a “ratchet” feature it shall lock and fully vest the financial gains at least once a year. A policy feature which determines index increases less frequently than annually or which does not fully “vest” all such increases at least annually can not be called a “ratchet” feature.
10) Insurance companies shall retain a copy of a document signed by the client, indicating the receipt of a copy of the buyer’s guide and an understanding of its contents.

Monday 29 November 2010

Installing new themes in any version of Firefox.

1. Unzip/Unrar the downloaded folder (of course!)
2. Open Firefox
3. Click on Tools
4. Then on Themes to open the themes window

Now also open the folderif the file is in the folder…

5. Just drag and drop the jar file into the theme window
6. Click on OK when Firefox asks you if you want to install the theme
7. Restart firefox

Now just open the themes window again and choose the theme and click on “Use Theme”. Then just restart firefox again to see you theme in action.

After that, have fun browsing with the theme that you like!

Tuesday 17 August 2010

How to increase the Browsing and Downloading speed in Windows Vista?

With windows Vista you have noticed the slow internet speed. The web browsing and downloading speed is very slow as compare to previous versions of windows. You can open the same sites in windows XP and server 2003 with the normal speed.

Follow the given steps to increase the Vista browsing speed:

First go to Advance tab in Internet Explorer and turn off the TLS (Transport Layer Security) encryption option. Here to fix problem with some secure pages turn on the SSL 2.0 (Secure Sockets Layer) feature and click Ok button to close it.


Follow the major fix for this problem:
In windows Vista, the TCP autotuning feature is enabled by default. Some web servers do not respond properly to this feature, so it appears that some sites open with very slow speed.

To use this feature, you will need to be logged into your computer with administrative rights.

First click on Start button and type CMD in Run option then press Enter.

At Command Prompt, type the following command and press enter.

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel= disabled

This command will disable the TCP autotuning feature. Now close the command Prompt and restart your computer after any changes to go into effect.

You can easily restore these setting by typing the following command at Command Prompt.

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel= normal
Now close the command Prompt and again restart your computer after any changes to go into effect.

Monday 9 August 2010

Epic Browser: From INDIAN For INDIAN

Bangalore based startup Hidden Reflex has announced the launch of its browser "Epic", which aims at making Indians all over the world proud.

Epic, which also happens to be the first entirely Indian made web browser, is based on the Mozilla platform and comes with quite a bunch of India centric features. We did take it for a short spin and we came out quite happy with it. Before we look at the details, let's look at details about Hidden Reflex, the company behind the browser.

The company was founded by the then U.S. based Engineer Alok Bhardwaj in 2007. However, the company is currently based in Bangalore. They initially had a team of three members and have now grown to quite a bunch of people who are working on two separate products. The first one, Epic, has already been launched. The other one is still in the making.
you can download epic from here

Wednesday 28 July 2010

Different Types of Computer Viruses

Computer Virus is a kind of malicious software written intentionally to enter a computer without the user’s permission or knowledge, with an ability to replicate itself, thus continuing to spread. Some viruses do little but replicate others can cause severe harm or adversely effect program and performance of the system. A virus should never be assumed harmless and left on a system. Most common types of viruses are mentioned below:

Types of viruses

Boot viruses:
These viruses infect floppy disk boot records or master boot records in hard disks. They replace the boot record program (which is responsible for loading the operating system in memory) copying it elsewhere on the disk or overwriting it. Boot viruses load into memory if the computer tries to read the disk while it is booting.
Examples: Form, Disk Killer, Michelangelo, and Stone virus

Program viruses:
These infect executable program files, such as those with extensions like .BIN, .COM, .EXE, .OVL, .DRV (driver) and .SYS (device driver). These programs are loaded in memory during execution, taking the virus with them. The virus becomes active in memory, making copies of itself and infecting files on disk.
Examples: Sunday, Cascade

Multipartite viruses:
A hybrid of Boot and Program viruses. They infect program files and when the infected program is executed, these viruses infect the boot record. When you boot the computer next time the virus from the boot record loads in memory and then starts infecting other program files on disk.
Examples: Invader, Flip, and Tequila

Stealth viruses:
These viruses use certain techniques to avoid detection. They may either redirect the disk head to read another sector instead of the one in which they reside or they may alter the reading of the infected file’s size shown in the directory listing. For instance, the Whale virus adds 9216 bytes to an infected file; then the virus subtracts the same number of bytes (9216) from the size given in the directory.
Examples: Frodo, Joshi, Whale

Polymorphic viruses:
A virus that can encrypt its code in different ways so that it appears differently in each infection. These viruses are more difficult to detect.
Examples: Involuntary, Stimulate, Cascade, Phoenix, Evil, Proud, Virus 101

Macro Viruses:
A macro virus is a new type of computer virus that infects the macros within a document or template. When you open a word processing or spreadsheet document, the macro virus is activated and it infects the Normal template (Normal.dot)-a general purpose file that stores default document formatting settings. Every document you open refers to the Normal template, and hence gets infected with the macro virus. Since this virus attaches itself to documents, the infection can spread if such documents are opened on other computers.
Examples: DMV, Nuclear, Word Concept.

Active X:
ActiveX and Java controls will soon be the scourge of computing. Most people do not know how to control there web browser to enable or disable the various functions like playing sound or video and so, by default, leave a nice big hole in the security by allowing applets free run into there machine. There has been a lot of commotion behind this and with the amount of power that JAVA imparts, things from the security angle seem a bit gloom.

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