The National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ (NAIC) Life Insurance Policy Locator tool has been a huge success in its first year of availability, helping thousands of consumers find misplaced life insurance policies.
Since its launch last November, the tool has matched 8,210 beneficiaries with lost or misplaced life insurance policies or annuities worth $92.5 million.
“State insurance regulators identified the scattershot, intensely manual process of helping consumers search for lost life insurance policies,” Ted Nickel, NAIC president and Wisconsin Insurance Commissioner, said. “Working together with the NAIC we leveraged innovation and technology to develop a bespoke solution providing an easy way for consumers to access nearly all life insurers and search for lost life insurance policies. It’s been a positive partnership with the life insurers providing finality and peace of mind for consumers.”
Since the policy locator was launched, more than 40,000 consumers have used it for searches to find lost policies and annuities.
“The response from this project has been tremendous. We encourage everyone to use this search tool,” Nickel added.
State insurance regulators have investigated unclaimed life insurance benefit payments since 2010. In 2015, life insurers paid more than $74 billion in benefits to consumers throughout the United States.