How can I locate a lost life insurance policy?

While it might seem odd that someone would lose a life insurance policy, it actually happens pretty frequently.  The stress you might be feeling over the loss of a loved one might be made worse if you are unable to locate a life insurance policy.  While it may seem like searching for a needle in a haystack if you don’t know a great deal about the policy someone had, there are things that you can do in order to locate a lost life insurance policy.

The first thing you should do is look through the person’s personal effects to try to find some record of the policy, such as a cancelled check, premium statement, bank statement, credit card statement, or tax return.  There is a good chance that these items will have the name of the insurance company listed because of past premium payments. Another good way to locate a policy is by looking at the individual’s applications for life insurance.  The reason for this is because the applications will list all other insurance policies owned or in force at the time of application.  If your search of the person’s personal effects is unsuccessful, you can also try to contact the person’s employer, accountant, financial advisor, attorney, or banker to see if they are aware of a life insurance policy.

Another thing to try is contacting your state’s department of insurance or your state’s unclaimed property office to see if they have any record of a policy or death benefit.  Although life insurance policies typically only end up as state unclaimed property if the insurance company has been aware of the policyholder’s death for over three years.  If all else fails, you can always hire a company specializing in this sort of thing to conduct a search in which they look in various databases and/or contact insurance companies in an attempt to track down the policy.