Wyoming Life & Health Study Guide

A producer holding both Wyoming lines is tested on what spans them: what happens when a carrier fails, what happens when one policy replaces another, and what Wyoming requires before you may recommend an annuity. The guaranty caps are where most marks are lost, because Wyoming’s numbers are genuinely not the model’s.

The guaranty caps are not the NAIC figures

Learn these from Wyoming’s own statute rather than from a national table, because three of them differ. W.S. 26-42-103(d)(ii) limits the association, with respect to any one life and regardless of the number of policies, to:

• (A) $300,000 in life insurance death benefits — but not more than $100,000 in net cash surrender and net cash withdrawal values for life insurance.
• (B) Health, in three tiers: (I) $100,000 for coverages not defined as disability insurance, disability income insurance, health benefit plan or long-term care insurance; (II) $300,000 for disability insurance, disability income insurance and long-term care; (III) $300,000 for health benefit plans.
• (C) $250,000 in the present value of annuity benefits, including net cash surrender and withdrawal values.
• (D) $250,000 in the aggregate for each payee of a structured settlement annuity, or the beneficiaries of a deceased payee.

The health benefit plan tier is $300,000 in Wyoming. The NAIC model figure is $500,000. If your prep material says $500,000, it is describing the model, not this state.

The aggregate, and the limb almost every summary drops

Subsection (E) caps the association’s total exposure, and it does so in two very different ways:

(E)(I) — an aggregate of $500,000 in benefits with respect to any one life under paragraphs (A) through (D).

(E)(II) — with respect to one owner of multiple nongroup policies of life insurance, whether that owner is an individual, firm, corporation or other person and whether the insureds are officers, managers, employees or others, not more than $5,000,000 in benefits, regardless of the number of policies and contracts held by the owner.

So Wyoming’s per-life aggregate is a flat $500,000 — not the model’s $300,000 with a $500,000 carve-out for health benefit plans. And the $5,000,000 limb has no counterpart in the standard model presentation at all. It is the provision that matters when an employer-owned or trust-owned life programme is caught in an insolvency.

One more limb worth carrying: (G) provides that benefits from a long-term care rider to a life policy or annuity contract are treated as the same type of benefits as the base contract — so a rider does not open a second tier.

Who may not mention the association

W.S. 26-42-116 prohibits using the association’s existence for sales, solicitation or inducement, and the class it binds is broader than the three actors usually quoted:

“No person including a member insurer, agent or affiliate of an insurer shall make, publish, disseminate, circulate or place before the public…”

The prohibition reaches any person; member insurers, agents and affiliates are named as included rather than as the whole of the class. And note the asymmetry between Wyoming’s two associations: the property and casualty chapter, Title 26 chapter 31, contains no counterpart section at all.

Replacement — a rule, not a statute, and a three-working-day clock

Wyoming’s replacement regime is 044-2 Wyo. Code R. chapter 12, and the producer duties at §12-5 run in a fixed order.

With or as part of each application the producer submits two signed statements: one from the applicant as to whether replacement is involved, and one from the producer as to whether they know it is or may be. Where replacement is involved, the producer must present a Replacement Notice in the form of Exhibit A not later than at the time of taking the application, signed by both applicant and producer and left with the applicant. The Notice must show the surrender charges on the policy being replaced, the sales charges on the policy being purchased, and the surrender periods and charges on the new one. The producer obtains a list of everything to be replaced, identified by insurer, insured and contract number, leaves the original or a copy of any written communications used in the presentation, and submits a copy of the Notice to the replacing insurer with the application.

The free look is at §12-7(d): the replacing insurer must provide, in the policy or in a separate written notice delivered with it, a right to “an unconditional refund of all premiums paid, which right may be exercised within a period of thirty (30) days commencing from the date of delivery of the policy.” For variable or market-value-adjustment policies the refund is instead the cash surrender value plus fees and charges deducted from gross premiums.

Notice to the existing insurer runs within three working days of the later-in-time of application receipt or policy issuance, whichever is sooner — tighter than the five business days several neighbouring states use. And the replacement register must be indexed by producer and by existing insurer and kept at least three years or until the next Department examination, whichever is later — the longer of two, not a flat period.

Annuities — best interest, and a four-credit gate

Wyoming adopted the 2020 NAIC best-interest model at Rule chapter 64. §64-5: a producer making a recommendation “shall act in the best interest of the consumer under the circumstances known at the time of the recommendation is made,” and has done so on satisfying four obligations — care, disclosure, conflict of interest and documentation.

§64-6 requires a one-time four-credit Department-approved annuity training course. A producer licensed after the regulation took effect may not sell annuities until it is completed. A producer who had already completed an approved annuity course under the earlier standard must, within six months, take either a new four-credit course or an additional one-credit course on sales practices, replacement and disclosure. Insurers must verify completion before allowing sales.

Long-term care is the mirror image: Wyoming’s own law prescribes no LTC producer training hour count. There is no training section in the long-term care statute and none in the Commissioner’s long-term care rule, in contrast to the annuity rule which has one.