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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.
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 and prior
financial advisors.
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.
- Review life insurance
applications.
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.
- Contact previous employers.
Former employers may have a record of a past group policy or policies.
- Check bank books and canceled
checks.
See if any checks have been made out to life insurance companies over
the years.
- Check the mail for a year
following the death of the policyholder.
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.
- Review the deceased’s income tax
returns for the past two years.
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.
- Contact all relevant state
insurance departments.
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, click here.
- Check with the state's unclaimed
property office.
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.
- Contact a private service that
will search for “lost life insurance.”
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.
- Do you think the life insurance
might have been bought in Canada?
If so, you might contact the Canadian Life and Health Insurance
Association (phone: 1-800-268-8099; Web site: www.clhia.ca).
- Try the MIB database.
There is a database of all applications for individual
life insurance that were processed during the last 12 years. There is a
$75 charge per search. Many searches are not successful: a random
sample of searches found only 1 match in every 4 tries. For
information, click here.
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