A recent New York Times article discusses unclaimed life insurance. When a life insurance policy owner passes away and the carrier cannot locate the beneficiary, then the money stays with the carrier and eventually goes to the state, where it sits as unclaimed property.
There are many ways to avoid this. I’ll discuss the role of a life insurance agent. Policy holders had a agent when purchasing coverage. A good agent will keep tract of you periodically, update your contact information and conducting policy reviews. If you’ve lost tract of your agent, you may select a new one to be your agent of record. This may save you thousands of dollars if you own a permanent life insurance policy, any cash value policy, either whole life or universal life, that you receive an annual statement. Cash value in your policy can be used to pay premium. This may be an extremely effective money saving strategy towards the end of your life. With term life insurance, an agent can inform you of your conversion options, which allows you to convert your term to permanent life insurance without medical evaluation. Conversion makes health problems not an obstacle to continuing coverage. You are given the same health rate as when you took out the policy. Conversion options expire often before the term policy ends. Do not assume you can take care of this at some later date.
Please contact me if you’ve lost tract of your life agent.