The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) has created a national service that provides consumers with search capabilities to help find a deceased person’s lost life insurance policies and annuities.
The NAIC’s Life Insurance Policy Locator provides nationwide access for assistance with finding life insurance policies and annuities. An estimated $1 billion in benefits from life insurance policies are unclaimed, according to Consumer Reports. The new tool builds on the life insurance policy locator programs developed separately in a number of states before this launch.
Consumer requests are encrypted and secured to maintain confidentiality. Participating insurers will compare submitted requests with available policyholder information and report all matches to state insurance departments through the Life Insurance Policy Locator. Companies will then contact beneficiaries or their authorized representatives.
In just the past 12 months alone, the Massachusetts Division of Insurance has helped match consumers with long-lost life insurance policies and annuities totaling more than $2 million dollars.
Nationally, the NAIC says the free locator has helped match 24,934 consumers with lost policies or annuities, with more than 48,000 consumers having conducted searches nationwide. The first year alone, the policy locator helped consumer find $92.5 million in lost benefits, however, as more matches have been made to the initial requests from the first year, that total has increased to $166.7 million. Overall, the NAIC says more than $368 million has been recovered since the official launch of the tool two years ago.
Check out the Life Insurance Policy Locator and FAQs here: