How To Make A Life Insurance Claim

Death comes uninvited. The initial shock and the sorrow of a sudden loss can make even the simplest, most straightforward steps, like filing a life insurance claim, seem overwhelming and complex. All too often, the spouse of a family breadwinner does not have the details about how to go about claiming life insurance.

While procedures, conditions and requirements may vary, common sense and full disclosure of information typically represent the simplest path to filing a life insurance claim.

Filing A Life Insurance Claim
If the the original policy is on file or in hand, the claims process is considerably easier. If the policy is missing, or out of reach, the details should be gathered and made available to to the insurance company, including the name of the policyholder, the policy number and the date of issuance of the policy.

Completing a Life Insurance Claims Form
After the policy has been found, the next thing to do is to locate the agent who sold your spouse the policy. If the agent cannot be found, the insurance company can be approached directly and the life insurance claimant or “nominee” can fill out the claims form. When completing the claims form, the nominee has to specify the date, place and cause of death. Along with this, details of the insurance policy also need to be filled in.

The claims form needs to be accompanied by a set of documents. The most important of the lot is the death certificate, issued by the municipality where the person was buried or cremated. This has to be accompanied by a statement by the doctor(s) who treated the policy holder before death.

Life Insurance Claims In Case Of An Incident

In case the death was due to an accident, then a first information report needs to be filed with the police, a copy of which has to be filed along with the claims form. Along with this, a police report, which has details of the circumstances of the death, and a postmortem report (if at all it was carried out) also need to be filed.

Also, the nominee needs to prove that he or she is the nominee mentioned in the policy. In this a case, a copy of any photo identity card suffices.

There is no fixed time frame within which the claim needs to be filed. The only thing that the nominee needs to prove is that the policy was in force when the policy holder died.

What if the premiums haven’t been paid?

If a term insurance policy has lapsed, because the policyholder has not paid the premiums, the insurance company does not process the claim.

Term insurance is pure insurance. In term plans, in case of death of the policyholder during the period of the policy, his nominee gets the sum assured (commonly known as the cover age amount). Of course, if the policyholder survives the period of the policy, he does not get anything.

In case of insurance policies other than term plan, however, a more lenient view is taken, provided the policyholder has paid premiums for three consecutive years before defaulting. After deducting for the premium due and other charges, the proportionate sum assured is paid out.

For more information give us a call at 800-301-8113 or visit goldcoastlifeinsurance.com