The most significant concerns facing principals charged with supervising variable annuity business is meeting the ever-changing policies and regulation imposed by state and federal security authorities. Regulators are notorious for taking defined regulations and statutes and formulating internal policies and interpretations and imposing these upon the broker/dealer community.

The sale of variable annuity products is an authorized area of business for most retail broker/dealers, yet the regulatory authorities have arbitrarily decided that the sale of variable annuities is a suspect act that must be individually justified and defendable when questioned. Sales of variable annuities to seniors are on the top of the regulators' Hot Topic list; this material focuses on meeting stated and unstated regulatory policies.