Blogg entry Fri 14th July

Author: Emma Mayo

It looks like some life insurance policies are forever – because people have been forgetting to tell their next of kin just exactly what they did with their policy documents. It’s not that quite simple, there are many reasons why a life insurance policy may sit unclaimed – but as a result it is estimated that at least £2 billion in life insurance claims have been left unclaimed. Surely that’s more than careless!

There are a myriad of reasons why life insurance policies get forgotten:

People forget that they took them out in the first place.
People often don’t leave a Will; as a result relatives have no evidence to show there was a policy, unless they come across some paperwork.
One in 16 people move house and forget to inform financial companies that they have moved, and lose touch completely.

It can get even more complicated. There were a lot of life assurance policies sold in the later half of the 20th Century which doubled as savings vehicles, and were very popular at the time. As times have changed and companies have been bought by larger companies, they have disappeared off the radar, but the money will still be there – waiting to be claimed one day.

If you have a life policy and the company no longer exists, the Internet is the best place to look. Search on the company name in Google then you should be able to get some information relating to the company that now owns the policy. If that fails, then try the Association of Friendly Societies on 020 7216 7436 (www.afs.org.uk) - a trade body that has old records relating to friendlies and mutuals from the past.

If that doesn’t work – call the Mutual Societies Registration on 020 7066 4916. The old Register of Friendly Societies, they are a government body that has now been swallowed up by the Financial Services Authority, but they will be able to tell you what happened to the company that used to hold your policy, and who you should now contact.

If you don’t even have the name of the company, but you know that you have a life policy out there somewhere – then even then all is not lost. There is a service called the Unclaimed Assets Register (www.uar.co.uk, 0870 241 1713) that can help you. They have a huge database containing details of financial products across the board, from dividends and unit trusts to pensions and life policies. If it’s a basic enquiry, then the service may be free of charge; otherwise they charge a one-off, fixed charge of £18.50 to find an answer to your query. 10% of that fee goes to charity. You can make the enquiry either over the Internet or by post, and you will need to provide a certain amount of detail such as date of birth and previous addresses.

In making any of these enquiries incidentally, you must either be the policyholder or have power of attorney over another’s finances.

In an ideal world, everyone would keep all their financial documentation in one place. But the very nature of a life policy means that they sit around for years and often get forgotten. Our advice is, whether you are the policyholder or if you have power of attorney, find as much information as you can before starting your search. And don’t give up – the information is accessible, it may cost you just a bit of time and effort, and possibly £18.50, to find it.

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