Insurance Audit Information

Who wants to pay more for car insurance than they need to? These days it doesn’t appear that anyone has an extra dollar to spare, so why not make sure that you have the cheapest car insurance policy for your needs? You could spend lots of time calling around to all of the different insurance companies in order to get a car insurance quotation, but why waste time like that?

Get online and you’ll find everything you need, immediately within your reach. The internet provides us with everything that we need from movie times to magazine subscriptions. Why wouldn’t you trust your car insurance needs to be taken care of online, too? You can find quotes from all of the major automobile insurance providers in the country online with a few simple clicks of your mouse.

When you get a car insurance quotation, make sure that you’re getting the full picture. Many times, you will get to the homepage of a car insurance company’s website and they will have thrown a lot of information at you, without really explaining what you’re looking at. Make sure that you go through a side by side comparison that shows all of the benefits of the insurance policy along with the price tag versus other insurance companies similar policies.

Companies love to throw numbers at people in the hopes that they’ll just jump at the lowest common denominator and buy their product. I do have to say, though, I’m impressed with the fact that the big insurance companies are not afraid to show you these price and policy comparisons. Many times, they aren’t the best value for your money, and they have to tell you exactly what the truth is.

I guess it’s a 50-50 toss as far as this goes, they know that many people will choose to go with them, just because they were honest. Others may go with them because of brand name acknowledgment. If you’re looking for the very lowest price, though, make sure you read all of the small print before you jump to buy. Make sure you check out more than one site, too. It surely won’t be intentional, but it is easy for incorrect information to make its way to a website.

Verify everything before you buy and you’ll be fine. Make sure you know what the different levels of protection are within the insurance policies that you’re comparing. The quotation that you get will be given after a series of questions are asked. Make sure to have the accurate information in order to get the right price quote.

You’ll need information like your drivers license number, your vehicle identification number and make, model and year of your car. You’ll also need to know the correct information regarding any past accidents or tickets that you may have. This will all come into play when an auto insurance company gives you a price quote.

When you need a car insurance quotation, give the insurance company the whole picture so that the information you receive is correct. Get online and get instant access to quotations about every kind of policy and rider that you may need.

A relative has just died. He had a life insurance policy with you listed as the beneficiary. There’s just one problem: the life insurance policy is missing. You have no idea which insurance company wrote it.

If you find the missing life insurance policy in the future, are you still eligible to receive the death benefit?

Hope they paid their insurance bills

If you’re a beneficiary and you find the lost life insurance policy shortly after the insured dies (within six months to a year, for example), claiming the death benefit should be trouble-free.

First, determine if the insured had term or permanent life insurance. If the insured held a term policy, you’ll receive the death benefit if he died before the end of the policy term. If he died after the policy expiration date, you would get nothing.

If the insured had a permanent life policy, you’ll receive the money if the death occurred while the policy was “in force,” meaning all premium payments were made up until the time of death. If the death was a while ago, you’ll receive the benefit with interest from the date of death.

If the life insurance policy lapsed — meaning the insured stopped making premium payments before he died — there’s a chance you might get nothing. When a permanent life insurance policy lapses, most insurance companies switch its status from permanent insurance to one of two options:

“Extended term” — The insurance company uses the cash value of the policy to buy a term life insurance policy for the same death benefit using the cash value of the policy. The death benefit will continue for the longest period the cash value will purchase.

“Reduced paid up” — The insurance company will keep the policy in force permanently, but will reduce the death benefit.

Gerry Brogla, an actuary for State Farm, says in the majority of the cases at his company, the permanent policy continues as extended term if it lapses. At State Farm, extended term is the default option for most permanent policies.

If the policy lapses, and the extended-term period expires before the insured dies, the policy is worthless and the life insurance beneficiary will get nothing. If the insured dies before the extended-term period is up, the beneficiary will receive the death benefit. If the policy lapsed because the insured died (thus ending premium payments and causing the insurance to be placed in extended-term status), the beneficiary will still collect the full death benefit, regardless of when the extended term was up. The beneficiary always needs to supply the insurance company with a death certificate to verify the date of death.

There is no time limit during which a life insurance beneficiary must step forward to collect the money, according to Jack Dolan, spokesman for the American Council of Life Insurers. “If a person shows up 30 years after [the insured's] death, the company still makes good on it,” Dolan assures.

What happens if no one ever reports the death?

If the insured dies and the insurance company does not learn of the death, the policy lapses. Insurance companies will take steps to find out why a policyholder stopped making payments.

When an insurance company stops getting payments, it sends letters to the insured informing him the policy may lapse as a result of unpaid premiums. If the letters go unanswered, the company might initiate a search to find the insured. If that comes up empty, the company will then lapse the policy.

If a beneficiary to a policy never steps forward, it unfortunately means the insured paid money to a policy throughout his life and his beneficiaries never see a penny. This is why its a good idea to make sure beneficiaries are aware of any life insurance policies you have.

If you’re lucky, the state may have your money

In some cases when a beneficiary fails to claim a death benefit for several years, the money is transferred to the state where the insurance policy was purchased under the escheat laws.

If a company knows an insured died and it cannot find the beneficiary, it must turn the full death benefit over to the state comptroller’s department within three to five years of the insured’s death. The money is transferred to the state where the insured bought the policy. The money is considered “unclaimed property” and gets lumped in with dormant bank accounts and uncollected rent deposits. The comptroller’s department maintains a database that lists the names and addresses of lost life insurance beneficiaries.

Many states will try to contact life insurance beneficiaries in an effort to pay the death benefits. In Texas, for example, the names and addresses of the beneficiaries are published annually in each county in the state. In New York, the Web site of the New York State Comptroller’s Office of Unclaimed Funds has an online search to find any unclaimed death benefits owed to you. You can find out the procedures in your state by contacting the office of your state comptroller or treasurer.

Keep in mind your chances of finding the policy with the state are slim. The insurance company has no obligation to hand the money over to the state if it’s unaware the insured died. In most cases, it’s the beneficiary who contacts the insurance company.

Also, the insurer only transfers the money to the state three to five years after it cannot find the beneficiary but knows the insured died. If the state doesn’t have the death benefit, it’s likely the insurer is still looking for the beneficiary or doesn’t know the policyholder has died.

Unclaimed death benefits are rarely transferred to the state. Dave Potter, a spokesman for Hartford Life, says less than 1 percent of his company’s death benefits go unclaimed.

Del Chance, a life insurance claims manager at State Farm, says, “Turning over life policy benefits to an individual state after the death of an insured is extremely rare. State Farm utilizes their own search techniques as well as outside vendors to locate lost beneficiaries in the event of the death of one of our insureds. By and large these procedures have always located the beneficiary.

Tips for making sure your life insurance beneficiaries get your death benefit:

1. Give your beneficiaries your policy information. It can be a difficult and awkward conversation, but an important one.

2. Keep all your financial records (especially your life insurance policies) in one place. Don’t force your beneficiaries to search your house from top to bottom after you die.

Tips for looking for lost life insurance policies:

1. Go through canceled checks or contact your relative’s bank for copies of old checks. Look for checks made out to insurance companies.

2. Ask those who may have known about your relative’s finances. Speak with the relative’s lawyer, banker or accountant. Also contact the relative’s insurance agent.

3. Contact your relative’s past employers. They might know of possible group life insurance. The insured might have also purchased supplemental life insurance through work.

4. Check the mail for a year. Premium bills and policy-status notices are usually sent annually.

5. Look at income tax returns for the past two years. Check for interest income from policies or expenses paid to life insurance companies.

6. Contact the Medical Information Bureau. If your relative bought life insurance fairly recently, there might be a trail of the companies to which he applied. The Medical Information Bureau (MIB) maintains a database that might show if insurers requested your relative’s medical information within the past seven years. Record searches can be requested through the MIB’s Policy Locator Service and cost $75. The MIB says that nearly 30 percent of searches turn up leads.

Life insurance is a critical consideration everyone should take in there life, simply because of the fact that we are all going to end up dying one day. No matter what you do, there is not enough technology, nor enough medicine to keep anyone alive for eternity. Nor there will never be in the near coming future, as humans are meant to evolve and with out death there is no way this will occur.

So life insurance should be taken very seriously, and by this statement I mean you should be very careful on the type of insurance policy you choose, or would like to take out for yourself. Below is a simple checklist of all of the items that should be taken into consideration before purchasing a policy.

Firstly you must be sure what you want your life insurance to actually do. What I actually mean by this is that. Do you want it pay your outstanding debts when you have gone? So that your family do not have to suffer, or do you just what it to pay for your funeral preparations as this can be quite costly in itself. Basically if you do not know what sort of life insurance you want you will probably end up paying quite a bit more for your policy due to the fact that you will probably be getting a lot of unwanted additional options.

A few more facts that you will need to take into consideration are as follows. Will you just be insuring yourself or your whole family? Most insurance companies allow you to get a joint life policy, whereas if your spouse or partner unfortunately passes away before you do, the life insurance benefit will go to the remaining policy holder. Secondly although this may sound quite ridiculous, you should decide on how long you would like your cover to be for. Ok an obvious fact is that no one knows when they are going to die, but what you should consider is if you have paid off your home and have no debts whatsoever in your name you should be able to get a cheaper life insurance policy over a certain period of time.

All in all you should remember that life insurance is very important, if you want to look after and care for your family both emotionally and financially once you are gone, then it is essential that you go and find the best deal to suit your needs.