Life insurance is a way to ensure your family’s financial security after you pass away. Depending on various factors of your life, you can choose any policy that meets your requirements.
You can search for your life insurance policy in any storage place such as bank safe deposits and files. Look through the address book to find out any names of agent or the company. If you can get in touch with the agent or company that had sold other insurance to the deceased, you can probably find out about the life insurance policy.
Whole life insurance gives financial protection as well as builds the cash value. Unlike something like affordable auto insurance where the main value comes from the protection you get when driving your car. For the duration of the contract, the premiums remain at the fixed level and over period of time, cash value is built by the policy on tax-deferred basis.
Monitor the mail for a period of one year to see if you can locate any premium reminders or any other correspondence, which can lead to providing any further information on the lost life insurance policy.
A database is maintained at MIB, who keeps track of all individual application for life insurance for past 12 years. There is a nominal fee of $75 per search, to help you locate your lost life insurance policy. But it is important to realize that this amount charged is for single search and not all the searches are successful. So you need to be patient and orgaised, in the similar fashion to the way you probably acted when you got your home owners insurance quote, and had to itemise your possessions on the policy.
You can contact the previous employer who may have the record of group policy. See the chequebook and find out if any payment has been made to life insurance company. You can also look for dividend or premium notices. There will be no notice from the company for due premium payment if the policy has been paid up. But, company may send other notice informing about status of the policy.
You can also check with unclaimed property office of the state. If the company is aware of death of the policy holder but is unable to locate the beneficiary, it has to turn the benefit of death to the state where policy was bought. You can hence check for any unclaimed money from state comptroller’s department.
Buying a policy is like buying a promise, a promise to pay something when there is a need. It is not only important to choose the affordable life insurance policy, you must also be very careful about choosing the company that is backing your policy which is much more important than pricing and competitiveness. One simple way to judge a company is its financial strength and you can check it online where independent services rank the insurance companies.
