There is no national or statewide database for locating life insurance policies, but with a little homework you should be able to track down the information you need to find the missing insurance policy.
The Insurance Information Institute provides helpful strategies that can be used to help find a missing life insurance policy. These strategies are summarized below:
1. Search for documents that are related to insurance. Look in the decent's files, storage boxes, records maintained in the decedent's computer, email accounts, or cloud accounts, and in safe deposit boxes. An address book may also list the name of an insurance agent who could have sold the policy. Search through the decedent's "contacts" on his or her phone.
2. Call financial professionals that the decedent previously used. These professionals may include accountants, attorneys, investment advisors, bankers, insurance agents and anyone else involved in the decedent's personal finances.
3. Analyze other life insurance applications. A life insurance application will list any other policies that were held at the time.
4. Review credit card statements, auto-payments, check registers, and cancelled checks for payments to life insurance companies.
5. Check the mail for a year after the death. You may find premium or dividend notices from the life insurance company. Insurers often send annual notices.
6. Contact Florida’s Bureau of Unclaimed Property. If the insurance company knows that the policyholder died, but cannot locate the beneficiary, the insurer will transfer the death benefits to the state.
7. Check with state insurance departments. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has created the Life Insurance Company Location System to help individuals find state insurance personnel who could possibly identify insurers that might have issued the policy.
8. Employ a private service to help find the policy. There are companies that will search for lost life insurance policies for a fee.
9. Contact the decendent's prior employers to confirm whether life insurance was offered, included, or purchased by the decedent as part of employment benefits.
You can reach Miami Insurance Claims Lawyer J.P. Gonzalez-Sirgo by dialing his direct number at (786) 272-5841, calling the main office at (305) 461-1095, or Toll Free at 1 (866) 71-CLAIM or email Attorney Gonzalez-Sirgo directly at [email protected].
