Four Florida insurers settle with regulator over use of ‘Death Master File’
The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (Office), Florida Department of Financial Services (DFS), and the Florida Office of the Attorney General (AG) have signed a national life claims settlement concerning the one-sided use of the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File (DMF) to stop paying a deceased person’s annuity.
The same information is not then used to find and begin paying the deceased’s family or other beneficiaries for life insurance policies.
Settlement agreements have been signed with four life insurance companies totalling more than $3.4 million, including Hartford Fire & and Casualty Group for $2.1 million, Securian for $625,000, Great American for $400,000 and Standard for $277,000.
The lead states of Florida, California, New Hampshire, North Dakota and Pennsylvania conducted these multi-state examinations.
The collective multi-state payments by Hartford, Great American, Securian and Standard is over $243,000, and covers the costs of the investigations and future compliance monitoring.
In the past five years, more than $6 billion in unknown or lost policy proceeds to beneficiaries have been returned directly by the companies and over $2.8 billion delivered to the states’ unclaimed property programs, which continue efforts to locate and pay beneficiaries.
On July 1, Florida implemented comprehensive legislation requiring life insurance companies to search the DMF and compare the records of both current life insurance policies and those going back to January 1, 1992, when trying to find beneficiaries of a life insurance benefit.
Senate Bill 966, championed by Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater (DFS) and signed by Governor Scott, strengthens the state’s unclaimed property laws for the protection of Florida consumers and provides life insurance companies with a standardised methodology for locating beneficiaries.
