A consumer advocate is talking to state insurance regulators about a grave threat to the performance of life insurance policies, pensions and individual annuity contracts: the possibility that the consumers and their beneficiaries will never claim the benefits they're owed, and that the product providers will never pay out the promised benefits.
Richard Weber, the treasurer of the Life Insurance Consumer Advocacy Center, spoke about the lost-consumer problem Sunday in Hollywood, Florida, at an in-person meeting of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners' Consumer Liaison Committee.
The NAIC has tried to tackle the problem by developing and promoting a Life Insurance Policy Locator Service.
But Weber said that problems with death record access are still keeping insurers and product beneficiaries apart, and that those problems threaten much of the $38 trillion in life, pension and annuity benefits U.S. consumers have purchased.
The impact of communication failures may be especially dire for "solo agers," or the 6 million Americans ages 55 and older who live alone and who have no children, spouses or partners to keep track of their financial arrangements.
For five reasons Weber presented about why tracking consumer deaths is still a problem for life and annuity issuers, drawn from his presentation, see the gallery accompanying this article.
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