Florida Facing Millions in Unclaimed Life Insurance
According to the latest reports of Florida Department of Financial Services, the state has millions of dollars in unclaimed life insurance.
If the reports of Florida Department of Financial Services is to be believed, then the state holds around $355 million in unclaimed life insurance, while the total Florida unclaimed money is somewhere around $1 billion. Every year, around hundreds of millions in life insurance benefits goes unclaimed, mainly because the beneficiaries are not aware of any unclaimed money that he owns. Eventually, these benefits from life insurance are transferred to Florida unclaimed property divisions, who benefit from this money in the meantime.
According to the statistics of life insurance companies, around 80% of the total insurance policies issued by them goes unclaimed due to several reasons. Mostly the policies are not paid due to the failure of the owner to pay premiums and issuance of term life policies that finishes without death payment and lost or forgotten life insurance policies.
Moreover, many policyholders do not tell their loved ones or beneficiaries about life insurance policies, mainly to avoid any arguments in the family over beneficiary rights. After the death of the owner of policy, even if someone knows about the existence of insurance policy, they are not aware about exactly where the policy is and the insurance company that issued the policy. Many times, life insurance companies are unaware of the death of the policyholder and thus, they are not able to contact the beneficiaries that results in the waste o policy’s death benefits. In this way, millions of life insurance proceeds become Florida unclaimed money.
People, who wish to claim unclaimed life insurance, have to locate the policy. This is a challenging task as there are thousands of life insurance companies, and some have even merged, demutilized, undergone name change, or gone into receivership. The beneficiary can speak to attorneys, accountants, insurance agents, or other trusted professionals who were associated with the policyholder in the past decades, to get information about existence of unclaimed life insurance.
The government is trying to create awareness among people to locate unclaimed money and property. They suggest that claimant should check the databases owned by the state that contains the names and addresses of beneficiaries of lost life insurance policies and any other form of Florida unclaimed money.
