Cite as: 510 U. S. 86 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
Senate draft, which would indeed have "settled [insurance industry] expectations," see post, at 111, Congress adopted an exemption containing words of limitation. We are directed by those words, and not by the discarded draft. Cf. Russello v. United States, 464 U. S. 16, 23-24 (1983) (when Congress deletes limiting language, "it may be presumed that the limitation was not intended").12
Persuaded that a plan's deposits are not shielded from the reach of ERISA's fiduciary prescriptions solely by virtue of their placement in an insurer's general account, we proceed to the question the Second Circuit decided: Is Hancock an ERISA fiduciary with respect to the free funds it holds under GAC 50?
C
To determine GAC 50's qualification for ERISA's guaranteed benefit policy exclusion, we follow the Seventh Circuit's lead, see Peoria Union Stock Yards Co. Retirement Plan v. Penn Mutual Life Ins. Co., 698 F. 2d 320, 324-327 (1983), and seek guidance from this Court's decisions construing the insurance policy exemption ordered in the Securities Act of 1933. See 48 Stat. 75, 15 U. S. C. § 77c(a)(8) (excluding from the reach of the Securities Act "[a]ny insurance or endowment policy or annuity contract or optional annuity contract").
In SEC v. Variable Annuity Life Ins. Co. of America, 359 U. S. 65 (1959), we observed that "the concept of 'insurance' involves some investment risk-taking on the part of the company," and "a guarantee that at least some fraction of the
"funds held by an insurance carrier unless that carrier holds funds in a separate account." S. 4, Amdt. No. 496, § 511, id., at 1451.
12 Congress' failure to pass a blanket exclusion for funds held by an insurer in its general account also counsels against reading the second sentence of the guaranteed benefit policy exception, 29 U. S. C. § 1101(b)(2)(B), which includes all separate account assets within the definition of "plan assets," as implying that assets held in an insurer's general account are necessarily not plan assets.
101
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