“Congress finds that—“(1) members of the Armed Forces perform great sacrifices in protecting our Nation in the War on Terror;
“(2) the brave men and women in uniform deserve to be offered first-rate financial products in order to provide for their families and to save and invest for retirement;
“(3) members of the Armed Forces are being offered high-cost securities and life insurance products by some financial services companies engaging in abusive and misleading sales practices;
“(4) one securities product offered to service members, known as the ‘mutual fund contractual plan’, largely disappeared from the civilian market in the 1980s, due to excessive sales charges;
“(5) with respect to a mutual fund contractual plan, a 50 percent sales commission is assessed against the first year of contributions, despite an average commission on other securities products of less than 6 percent on each sale;
“(6) excessive sales charges allow abusive and misleading sales practices in connection with mutual fund contractual plan;
“(7) certain life insurance products being offered to members of the Armed Forces are improperly marketed as investment products, providing minimal death benefits in exchange for excessive premiums that are front-loaded in the first few years, making them entirely inappropriate for most military personnel; and
“(8) the need for regulation of the marketing and sale of securities and life insurance products on military bases necessitates Congressional action.
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