Unclaimed Life Insurance

It's perhaps not too surprising that a large number of life insurance policies end up lost or forgotten. In many cases the people who took them out and kept up the payments died and might not have let others know of the policy's existence, for example.

In other cases the policy might have accumulated some value, but the owner might have forgotten it and stopped keeping up payments.

What you'll find, no matter what the situation, is that the unclaimed funds are those of people who've died.

General estimates are that there's £2 billion pounds in unclaimed assets from insurance policies. Compared to unclaimed bank accounts that might be pretty small potatoes, but it's still an awful lot of money.

Finding a Policy

The real trick can be discovering whether a dead relative has a policy with unclaimed funds in it. If they died without a will, there will be no indication, and even those who die with wills can sometimes forget some of their assets.

One possible way to determine the existence of a policy is to look at the person's bank statements to see if regular payments were made to a policy. If you truly believe that a policy existed, try contacting the person's previous employers, if they're still in business, to see if there were any records of deductions, although this could be a decidedly long shot in the case of older people.

If you come across payments to a mutual society, those could be along the lines of an insurance policy, since mutual societies and friendly societies - both now things of the distant past - had savings plans akin to small insurance policies, with low premiums.

Trying to track the mutual society, if you have the name, is actually quite easy. All you need to do is contact the Association of Friendly Societies (www.afs.org.uk). You can also contact the Financial Services Authority, which should have information on mutual and friendly societies, since it grew out of the old Mutual Societies Registration.

Insurance Companies

In some instances you'll be able to readily identify the company with which the person had a policy, and if that's the case you ought to contact them directly, even if you don't have any details about the policy itself.

What if you can't find the name of the company, though? What can you do at that point? You need to contact the Association of British Insurers (www.abi.org.uk), which can try and initiate a search. If you know even part of the company's name, the ABI site has a search facility to help you locate the company, including contact details - their site is the ideal place to find contact details for all insurance companies.

The Biggest Problem

Your greatest challenge, and the reason so many policies go unclaimed, could simply be locating a policy. With so many companies in existence (and many more no longer around), you'll need to be able to find a certain amount of information first, and the further back you go, the harder that could be.

However, if you have the time and energy, as well as access to the deceased's records, the payoff might well end up being worth your time.