New Website Helping Life Insurance Beneficiaries

We wrote a previous blog entry about the troublesome amount of life insurance proceeds that go unclaimed each year, and most of this is on the shoulders of the insurance companies.  The consumer does have some power over this though.  We all know it's important to advise your beneficiaries of what you have set up with their name as a funds recipient, but that doesn't always happen.  If you are like some of the thousands of Americans who think they are owed some life insurance, but are not sure how to go about checking, there is a new opportunity for you.

This new opportunity involves a website to help life insurance beneficiaries learn about funds that they are owed.  This came about officially after a review of unpaid payments which resulted in funds totaling over $200 million.  According to the article by Henry Goldman and Noah Buyayar on Bloomberg.com, New York governor Andrew Cuomo wants to ensure families have a reliable way to determine what is owed to them.  The new website will help these families search for policies that have been lost or forgotten.

Life insurance companies throughout the nation are facing increased scrutiny over these unclaimed life insurance funds.  New York's regulator ordered firms to use current Social Security Administration data to figure out when death payments are due.  The Department of Financial Services is working hard to ensure this problem is taken care of, and this website will give some of the power back to the beneficiaries as they sort through their own finances.