Congress has found the supposed problem with complicated insurance products: the SEC requires insurers to disclose too much.

Representatives Zach Nunn of Iowa (Athene, Principal)  and Brittany Pettersen of Colorado (Empower) have introduced the deceptively named CLEAR Forms Act, H.R. 10234. The insurance-industry-backed legislation would require the SEC to create new registration forms for registered index-linked life insurance, contingent deferred annuities and other registered non-variable insurance contracts.

Its most dangerous provision instructs the SEC to “limit the disclosures” about an insurance company to those required by existing Form N-4 or Form N-6.

That could make it harder—not easier—to uncover the next Mark Walter.

Walter’s insurers show why company disclosure matters

Walter-related insurers—including Delaware Life, Clear Spring Life, formerly Guggenheim Life, and Security Benefit—sell billions of dollars of fixed, indexed and variable annuities.

Their SEC filings have revealed information consumers could never learn from glossy annuity brochures.

A huge SEC registration statement for the Gainbridge OneUp registered index-linked annuity disclosed that:

• Clear Spring retained index risk on certain fixed indexed annuities;
• Clear Spring purchased the derivatives and performed the hedging;
• Gainbridge paid Clear Spring an allowance tied to the “option budget”;
• The companies had reinsurance, tax-sharing, administrative-services and books-and-records agreements; and
• Affiliates provided accounting, actuarial, marketing and operational services.

That is what indexed-annuity disclosure should reveal. The index is merely  a derivative swap over the top of an annuity. The important questions are who holds the money, who manages it, who receives the fees and what risks sit on the insurer’s balance sheet. Read the SEC filing.

Delaware Life proves these are not theoretical concerns

In 2026, Delaware Life acknowledged that its audited 2025 financial statements had been delayed. It then offered rescission rights for certain payments into SEC-registered variable-annuity and variable-life contracts. Read the rescission filing.

Separately, Delaware Life and Clear Spring disclosed major errors in how Walter-related private-credit investments had been classified. Delaware Life’s reported affiliated exposure reportedly rose from less than 5% to approximately 40% of invested assets after reclassification.

This is exactly why consumers need more information about the insurer—not merely a shorter explanation of caps and participation rates.

The bill protects the wrong party

The CLEAR Forms Act says purchasers should receive information needed to make “knowledgeable decisions.” But it then places a statutory ceiling on what the SEC may demand about the issuing insurance company. Read H.R. 10234.

A future prospectus could explain:

• The index;
• The buffer;
• The participation rate;
• The surrender period; and
• The lifetime-income formula.

Yet it could provide far less useful information about:

• Ultimate ownership and control;
• Affiliated private-credit investments;
• Loans to companies controlled by the insurer’s owner;
• Affiliate management and origination fees;
• Offshore reinsurance;
• Assets without observable market prices;
• Internal-control failures; and
• The insurer’s real liquidity risk.

In other words, the customer could understand the product’s formula while remaining blind to the financial empire backing the promise.

Traditional indexed annuities are already largely hidden

The bill does not directly cover most traditional fixed indexed annuities because they are already exempt from SEC registration and can hide behind weak state regulation.

That makes the legislation even more troubling. Congress should be extending securities-level transparency to more general-account products—not importing the weaker insurance-disclosure model into federally registered products.

Security Benefit’s Foundations, Strategic Growth and Total Value annuities and Delaware Life’s Retirement Stages and DualTrack products illustrate the problem. Customers receive contracts, illustrations, rate sheets and sales brochures, but not the comprehensive public-company disclosure expected for ordinary securities.

The insurer can change future caps, participation rates and spreads. The purchaser remains locked in by surrender charges. The company keeps the investment spread while the customer bears its single-entity credit and liquidity risk.

Bottom line

The Walter investigation was not triggered because an annuity participation rate was confusing.

It arose from questions about ownership, affiliated transactions, private credit and the use of insurance-company assets across a sprawling financial empire.

Those are precisely the disclosures Congress should strengthen.

The next Mark Walter will not be exposed by a “consumer-friendly” summary prospectus. He will be exposed by following the money through insurers, asset managers, affiliates, reinsurance vehicles and private loans.

The CLEAR Forms Act could make that trail harder to follow.

It should be renamed the Concealing Loans, Entities, Affiliates and Risks Act.

Index Annuities Are a Scam

Security Benefit May Be the Biggest Annuity Risk Since AIG—and the State Guaranty System Is Not Ready

State Guaranty Associations Behind Annuities Are Still a Joke—And Private Equity Has Made the Joke More Dangerous