Regulator: Insurers Overlooked 'Thousands' Of Death Claims

"It is an obligation [of companies] to seek out payment of beneficiaries even when claims are not filed," says Shapo. "We are saying that it is a terrible shame as well as being a regulatory issue if companies have information that beneficiaries should be paid and have failed to do so.

"We are going to aggressively seek to pass a regulation that spells out how companies are expected to search their available records," he says.

Initial details of the regulation that Shapo hopes to have in place by the spring, call for a search of the insured's name and any nicknames provided by a claimant for a period of three years before and after the insured's birth date. The search would encompass each day of that six-year window.

The issue of a multi-year search is considered important to regulators because they say that during the race-based policies investigation they came upon situations where insureds were often written a policy based on an age that did not reflect their true age. So, for instance, a 40-year-old man would be written as a 45-year-old man and, consequently, pay higher premiums.

Shapo says he does not want the search to result in "Nat Shapo's Thesauraus of Nicknames," but rather to include names and nicknames that could reasonably identify an insured.

Linda Lanam, vice president and chief counsel-state relations, with the American Council of Life Insurers, says it is very important that any regulations put in place have uniform requirements for searches to minimize unnecessary data systems costs.

Lanam says the initial take is that searching every day within a six-year time frame would be problematic, but that more input from systems experts is needed to determine how much work would need to be done to make systems compliant to such a requirement.

Scott Cipinko, executive director of the National Alliance of Life Companies in Rosemont, Ill., says the problem is broader than a small face amount issue.

"It is important to find people," Cipinko adds. But he expresses concern over the scope of a six-year search and the cost to companies to conduct such searches.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Life & Health/Financial Services Edition, November 26, 2001. Copyright 2001 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.

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