Free Washington Life & Health practice questions

Answer: D. 20 days

The required notice of claim provision calls for written notice within twenty days after a covered loss occurs or begins, or as soon after that as is reasonably possible. Notice given to the office the insurer designates, or to any authorized agent of the insurer, with enough information to identify the insured, counts as notice to the insurer. Ten, fifteen and ninety days are not the notice of claim period; fifteen and ninety days belong to other standard provisions, on furnishing claim forms and on proof of loss.

Answer: B. Before using them, along with any modification it proposes

RCW 48.19.040(1) requires every insurer or rating organization to file its classifications manual, manual of rules and rates, rating plans, rating rules and similar materials with the commissioner before using them, and to file every modification it proposes. Filing after first use, filing only on request, and filing once a year with a financial statement all put the filing later than the section allows. The section separately excuses an insurer from filing rates on individually rated risks, which this stem does not involve.

Answer: A. Dana is entitled to a refund of the premium paid, since she returned it within ten days of receipt

RCW 48.23.380(1) requires every individual life policy issued after September 1, 1977, to carry a notice that the policy owner may return the policy within ten days after receiving it and have the premium refunded if not satisfied for any reason. Dana returned it seven days after receipt, so the refund is due. No specific reason is needed, because the statute allows return for any reason. Return to the insurance producer through whom the policy was purchased is expressly allowed, and the statute calls for refunding the premium paid with no allowance for a commission deduction.

Answer: C. Not less than thirty days after that written notice

An assessment falls due no sooner than thirty days after member insurers receive prior written notice, and interest runs at twelve percent per annum from the due date onward. A ten-day or ninety-day period does not match the statute, and an assessment is not due on the day the board authorizes it, because written notice must come first.

Answer: D. Authority expressly given by the code, plus authority reasonably implied from it

RCW 48.02.060(1) gives the commissioner the authority the code expressly confers and the authority reasonably implied from the code's provisions. An express-only reading leaves out the implied authority the section grants. A reading that reaches any useful power regardless of the code ignores that both halves of the grant are tied to the code itself. The section draws the authority from the code, not from an executive order.

Answer: D. A credit life insurance policy issued in connection with the client's auto loan

WAC 284-23-430(1) provides that, unless the regulation specifically includes them, transactions involving credit life insurance are outside the replacement regulation. The other three are ordinary individual life or annuity sales from unaffiliated insurers, and the credit life exemption does not reach them.

Answer: B. The insurance commissioner ex officio and each member insurer

The association is created as a nonprofit unincorporated legal entity made up of the commissioner, serving ex officio, and each member insurer. Membership is not optional: member insurers must be and remain members as a condition of their authority to do business in Washington. Producers, gubernatorial appointees and policyholder representatives are not named as its members.

Answer: A. To establish minimum standards for medicare supplement insurance and an outline of coverage

WAC chapter 284-66 states that it supplements chapter 48.66 RCW, the Medicare Supplemental Health Insurance Act, and lists its purposes, which include establishing minimum standards for medicare supplement insurance, an outline of coverage and other disclosure requirements, along with loss ratio requirements, policy reserves and filing and reporting procedures. Protection against an issuer's insolvency, a single mandated premium for each plan and a producer licensing examination are not among the purposes the chapter lists.

Answer: C. If approved by the commissioner and in no respect less favorable to the insured or beneficiary

Each individual disability policy delivered in Washington must contain the standard provisions in the words the statute uses. The insurer may instead use corresponding provisions of different wording only if the commissioner approves them and each one is not less favorable in any respect to the insured or the beneficiary. A wording that is merely equivalent on balance fails, because the test applies in every respect. A filing that draws no objection is not the approval the section requires, and the section does not make substitution turn on the insured's signed acceptance.

Answer: C. Three years after the date of the form's last authorized use

WAC 284-23-240(1) requires the insurer to keep, at its home or principal office, a file holding one copy of each form it has authorized under the regulation, and to retain each form for three years measured from its last authorized use. The clock starts at last use rather than first authorization, and the period is neither one year nor five.