Agent Tries to Supplement the Shoebox In The Closet

Even the I-dotters and T-crossers who know the names of their parents’ main life insurers are unlikely to know the names of the issuers of smaller life policies the parents may have accumulated over the years, such as paid-up baby policies from days gone by, or the credit life policies that come along with credit cards.

To fill the holes in knowledge, “there has to be a central database,” Hartmann said.

MIB Group Inc., Braintree, Mass.—an organization that runs a medical information database service for life insurers—offers a locator service for the customers of the member insurers, but the database goes back only seven years, and it has records only when a company searched MIB records before writing a policy.

Professional policy locators can help, but there is no guarantee that life insurers will respond to a locator service’s queries, Hartmann said.

For a consumer, simply contacting a life insurer to learn whether the consumer is a beneficiary of a policy written by a life insurer is more difficult than most consumers expect, Hartmann added

Because of privacy concerns, a life insurer may require an individual to submit a copy of the death certificate and other paperwork before the insurer will verify that the individual appears to be a policy beneficiary.

The process may be simple if two companies are involved, annoying if 10 are involved, and daunting if no one has any idea who wrote a dead person’s coverage and hundreds of insurers must be contacted.

Simply knowing the issuer name makes the claim process much faster and much easier, Hartmann said.

So why haven’t insurers started encouraging policyholders to use Hartmann’s service, or started a competing service?

One possibility that Hartmann has considered is that insurers would just as soon not have to pay more claims more quickly. Another possibility is reluctance to be the first big, high-profile company to try something new. A third possibility is privacy worries.

Hartmann said he thinks the design of the FindYourPolicy.com site, which requires users to enter only their names, their birthdates and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, should minimize privacy concerns.

The information a hacker could get out of the database would probably not be enough to start the claim process at a life insurer, let alone get a death benefit, Hartmann said.

But Hartmann has given up for now on trying to attract the interest of insurers or big life agencies. He plans to use venture capital money to mount a publicity campaign and appeal directly to consumers.

In 2012, Hartmann will be courting consumers through radio shows, television appearances and raffles.

Hartmann is hoping an insurance company will respond to strong consumer demand for the service and start recommending it to its own customers.

If a life insurer participated, that would show consumers that the company really cares about clients, Hartmann said.

Participation also could help a life insurer make a case that it had done its level best the next time the unclaimed property auditors swing by.