The Vermont Statutes Online

Title 8 : Banking and Insurance

Chapter 121 : Fraternal Benefit Societies

• § 4476. Nonforfeiture benefits, cash surrender values, certificate loans, and other options

  (a) A society may grant paid-up nonforfeiture benefits, cash surrender values, certificate loans, and such other options as its laws may permit. As to certificates issued on and after November 22, 1959, a society shall grant at least one paid-up nonforfeiture benefit, except in the case of pure endowment, annuity or reversionary annuity, contracts, reducing term insurance contracts or contracts of term insurance of uniform amount of 15 years or less expiring before age 66.

  (b) In the case of certificates other than those for which reserves are computed in accordance with subsection (d) of this section, the value of every paid-up nonforfeiture benefit and the amount of any cash surrender value, loan or other option granted shall not be less than the excess, if any, of (1) over (2) as follows:

  (1) the reserve under the certificate determined on the basis specified in the certificate; and

  (2) the sum of any indebtedness to the society on the certificate, including interest due and accrued, and a surrender charge equal to two and one-half percent of the face amount of the certificate, which, in the case of insurance on the lives of children, shall be the ultimate face amount of the certificate, if death benefits provided under the certificate are graded.

  (c) However, in the case of certificates issued on a substandard basis or in the case of certificates, the reserves for which are computed upon the American Men Ultimate Table of Mortality, the term of any extended insurance benefit granted including accompanying pure endowment, if any, may be computed upon the rates of mortality not greater than 130 percent of those shown by the mortality table specified in the certificate for the computation of the reserve.

  (d) In the case of certificates for which reserves are computed on the Commissioners 1941 Standard Ordinary Mortality Table, the 1941 Standard Industrial Table, or such later tables as are authorized for use by domestic life insurers, every paid-up nonforfeiture benefit and the amount of any cash surrender value, loan, or other option granted shall not be less than the corresponding amount ascertained in accordance with the provisions of the laws of this State applicable to life insurance companies issuing policies containing like insurance benefits based upon such tables. (Added 1959, No. 197, § 16, eff. Nov. 22, 1959; amended 1985, No. 111 (Adj. Sess.),§§ 2, 3, eff. April 8, 1986; amended 2021, No. 105 (Adj. Sess.), § 191, eff. July 1, 2022.)