How to trace unclaimed Life Insurance benefits?

Locating life insurance documents for a deceased relative can be a daunting task—for one thing, as of this moment there are no national databases of all life insurance policies. However, with a little sleuthing, you can successfully navigate the paper trail.

Here are some strategies to help simplify your search:

1. Look for documentation related to insurance

Look through your files, bank safe deposit boxes, and other storage locations for insurance-related paperwork. Also, look through address books for the names of any insurance professionals or companies—an agent or firm that sold the deceased's vehicle or home insurance might be aware of a life insurance policy.

2. Speak with a financial advisor

Attorneys, accountants, investment advisers, bankers, business insurance agents, brokers, and other financial experts may have knowledge of the deceased's life insurance policies, whether they are current or former clients.

3. Examine applications for life insurance

Each policy has an application that is tied to it. Look at the application if you can discover any of the deceased's life insurance policies—it will have a list of any other life insurance policies owned at the time of the application.

4. Get in touch with prior employers

Former employers keep track of previous group policies.

5. Examine your bank statements

Check to see whether any checks or automated payments to life insurance firms have been written over the years.

6. Go through your mail

Look for premium notices or dividend notices for the year following the policyholder's death. There will be no notice of premium payments due if a policy has been paid up; the business may still issue an annual notification.

7. Examine your tax returns

Examine the deceased's tax returns for the past two years to discover if there is any interest revenue from life insurance companies or interest expenses paid to them. On permanent policies, life insurance firms pay interest on accumulations and charge interest on policy loans.

8. Contact the insurance departments in your state

Residents looking for misplaced policies can use the free search services provided by the twenty-nine state insurance departments. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) provides a "Life Insurance Company Location System" that will assist you in locating state insurance department officials who can assist you in locating companies that may have written life insurance on the deceased. Go to the NAIC Life Insurance Policy Locator to use this service.

9. Contact your state's Unclaimed Property Office

If a life insurance company discovers that an insured customer has died but cannot locate the beneficiary, the death benefit must be turned over as "unclaimed property" to the state where the policy was purchased. Whether you know (or may assume) where the policy was purchased, you can check with the state comptroller's office to see if there is any unclaimed money from the deceased's life insurance policies. The National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators is a good place to start.

10. Contact a private investigator

A number of private companies will assist you in the search for a lost life insurance policy for a price. They'll call insurance providers on your behalf to see if the death was covered by insurance. Websites are frequently used to provide this service.

11. Is it possible that the policy started in Canada?

If you believe the insurance was purchased in Canada, you can get more information from the Canadian Ombudservice for Life and Health Insurance.

12. Use the MIB database to look for information

Although there is no central database of policy documents, there is one that contains all individual life insurance applications processed from January 1, 1996.

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