Life Insurance
- Why should I buy life insurance?
- How much life insurance do I need?
- What are the principal types of life insurance?
- How is life insurance sold?
- What is a beneficiary?
- What are the types of term insurance policies?
- What are the different types of permanent policies?
- How should I choose what type of life insurance to buy?
- How do I pick a life insurance company?
- How can I save money on life insurance?
- Do "empty nesters" need life insurance?
- Should I buy life insurance on my child's life?
- How should I organize and store my life insurance records?
- How often should I review my policy?
- If I can't pay my premium, what should I do?
- How do I file a life insurance claim?
- How can I locate a lost life insurance policy?
How can I locate a lost life insurance policy?
If a family member dies and you are unable to locate his or her life insurance policies, there is, unfortunately, no national or statewide database of all life insurance policies that you can consult. However, you can try to determine:
- which insurance company might have issued the policy
- which agent or broker might have sold or serviced the policy
- whether the deceased might have had insurance through an employer, union or trade association, or other group to which he/she belonged.
Here are some strategies that might turn up useful information:
- Look for insurance-related documents.
- Contact current and prior financial advisors.
- Review life insurance applications.
- Contact previous employers.
- Check bank books and canceled checks.
- Check the mail for a year following the death of the policyholder.
- Review the deceased's income tax returns for the past two years.
- Contact all relevant state insurance departments.
- Check with the state's unclaimed property office.
- Contact a private service that will search for "lost life insurance."
- Do you think the life insurance might have been bought in Canada?
- Try the MIB database.
Search through files, bank safe deposit boxes, and other storage places to see if there are any insurance-related documents. Also, look through address books to see if the names of any insurance agents or companies are listed. An agent or company who sold the deceased their auto or home insurance may know about the existence of a life insurance policy.
Contact current or prior attorneys, accountants, investment advisors, bankers, business insurance agents/brokers and others who might have known about the deceased's life insurance.
The application for each policy is attached to that policy. So if you can find any of the deceased's life insurance policies, look at the applications for them. The application will have a list of all other life insurance policies owned at the time of the application.
Former employers may have a record of a past group policy or policies.
See if any checks have been made out to life insurance companies over the years.
Look for premium notices or dividend notices. If a policy has been paid up, there will no notice of premium payments due. However, the company may still send an annual notice regarding the status of the policy or it may pay or send notice of a dividend.
Look for interest income from and interest expenses paid to life insurance companies. Life insurance companies pay interest on accumulations on permanent policies and charge interest on policy loans.
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has a "Life Insurance Company Location System" to help you find state insurance department personnel who might help identify companies that might have written life insurance on the deceased. To access that service, go to the NAIC's Life Insurance Company Location System.
If a life insurance company knows that an insured client has died but can't find the beneficiary, it must turn the death benefit over to the state in which the policy was bought as "unclaimed property." If you know (or can guess) where the policy was bought, you can contact the state comptroller's department to see if it has any unclaimed money from life insurance policies belonging to the deceased.
Several private companies will, for a fee, contact insurance companies for you to find out if the deceased was insured. This service is often provided through their Web sites.
If so, you might contact the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association (phone: 1-800-268-8099; Web site: www.clhia.ca).
There is a database of all applications for individual life insurance that have been processed since 1996. There is a $75 charge per search. Searches are not always successful: a random sample of searches found 1 match in every 4 tries. For more information, go to MIB's Policy Locator page.
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