The National Association of Insurance Commissioners' “Life Insurance Policy Locator” has matched 8,210 beneficiaries with lost or misplaced life insurance policies or annuities – totaling $92.5 million returned to consumers – since its launch last November, the NAIC has reported.
“State insurance regulators identified the scattershot, intensely manual process of helping consumers search for lost life insurance policies,” said Ted Nickel, the president of the NAIC and the insurance commissioner of Wisconsin. “Working together with the NAIC we leveraged innovation and technology to develop a bespoke solution providing an easy way for consumers to access nearly all life insurers and search for lost life insurance policies. It's been a positive partnership with the life insurers providing finality and peace of mind for consumers. The response from this project has been tremendous. We encourage everyone to use this search tool.”
More than 40,000 consumers have conducted searches since the policy locator was launched. The NAIC developed the locator in 2016 to provide search capabilities to help find lost life insurance policies and annuities.
Since 2010, state insurance regulators have investigated unclaimed life insurance benefit payments. In 2015, life insurers paid more than $74 billion in insurance policy benefits to consumers nationwide.
Learn more: www.naic.org.
Steven A. Meyerowitz
Steven A. Meyerowitz, a Harvard Law School graduate, is the founder and president of Meyerowitz Communications Inc., a law firm marketing communications consulting company. He may be contacted at [email protected].