We have been talking about a lawsuit filed by an asset recovery company against several life insurance companies. At issue is how the companies track insureds and locate beneficiaries once an insured has passed away. Florida has been at the forefront of putting pressure on life insurers to implement more efficient and effective internal procedures.
What happens to life insurance proceeds if the beneficiary has no idea he is on the policy? This is not a philosophical question or open to an “if a tree falls in the forest” debate. The law anticipates that this will happen, and state agencies like the Florida Department of Financial Services and the Office of Insurance Regulation do what they can to enforce the laws.
We have talked about the problem of unclaimed life insurance benefits before. In October 2012, for example, we posted about the state of Florida’s settlement with Nationwide Financial Services Inc. regarding its process for identifying insureds and notifying beneficiaries. Nationwide was the fourth life insurer to settle with the state, and consumer advocates and other states’ regulators praised Florida’s enforcement efforts.
Every year, generally around tax time, people go through their paper files to clean out the old stuff and put in the new. Out goes the investment account summary from 2004 — the rule is seven years, right? Keep important papers and tax records for seven years, then shred them?
Often, when insurance companies deny claims, they do it under the pretext of asserting that some element of the policyholder’s story puts the validity of the claim into question. In most cases, this is nothing more than the insurance company trying to save money by delaying or denying valid claims.
Well, if Florida didn’t have enough to boast about, we do now! The National Association of Insurance Commissioners recently released a comparison of insurance expenditures by state and by nation. Florida, the fourth most populous state, ranks third in the U.S. for insurance expenditures. We shell out more every year than developing nations do.
Industry numbers are coming in for fourth quarter 2012, and there is not much good news for property/casualty insurance customers. According to the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers’ Commercial P/C Market Index, commercial coverage premiums jumped 5 percent on average during the last three months of the year. The Southeast U.S., including Florida, followed the national trend.
Superstorm Sandy missed Florida, but as we have noted in past posts the storm wrought havoc further up the East Coast. As the insurance industry looks back at 2012, it has become clearer that Sandy was a key component of insurance companies’ higher than normal catastrophic losses last year.
This blog just wrote yesterday about the havoc that Superstorm Sandy has wreaked on the insurance market. People have had to suffer through endless delays in getting the money that they deserve to help them get back on their feet. What many may not think about is the damage the storm had on several businesses, which may have also lost a ton of property.
This blog has already discussed the devastating impact that Superstorm Sandy has had on homeowners along the northern half of the East Coast. Numerous people were literally left out in the cold when their homes were destroyed and insurance companies slow-walked the processing of insurance claims.
