Investing in a good life insurance policy is good, but unless you make sure that your beneficiaries can locate it when it’s time to make a claim, it will amount to nothing. You can avoid this scenario if you store your records wisely. This means your beneficiaries will not only be able to find your policy easily, but it will also be protected from damages due to fire, floods, and other disasters.
So what are the specific pieces of information that you should keep?
For every individual life insurance policy in your name, take note of:
The insurer’s name, city and state as well as date of issuance
Policy number and amount of benefit
Broker’s/agent’s name and address, type of policy (term, whole, etc.)
If your life insurance policy is under a group policy from employment, an alumni association or any club or organization, keep a record of the following:
Name of insurance sponsor and contact person for claims
Certificate number and when it was issued
Death benefit’s worth
There are certain financial programs which are built for income or other purposes that come with death benefits in the form of extra features, like annuities, disability insurance, and the rest. Read more about this at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance_policy. For these programs, you must keep a record of:
The kind of policy which offers death benefits as a feature;
The name and address (city and state) of the insurance company;
Location of the office that issued the policy;
Policy number, date of issuance, and amount of death benefit;
Name and address of broker/agent; and
Place where the insurance policies were originally issued.
Credit card and lending companies also offer life insurance for paying off outstanding loans of the deceased policyholder. If you have this kind of policy, make sure you have a record of:
The name of the company;
Loan number and when it was granted; and
Policy number and contact person for claims.
After knowing the pieces of information you need to keep, the question is where must they be kept?
It’s good to keep a set of these records in your house, but in a place where your beneficiaries will be able to access. This may be a place where your other vital documents like your health insurance policy and your will can be found. Surely, you should also keep a set in an offsite area, meaning outside your home. Perhaps this can be a safe deposit box, or maybe you can keep the documents with a reliable storage service provider. Each page should have a record of the date when you updated the information last. This way, your beneficiaries can easily tell which copy is more recent – the one in your home or in the offsite storage. If you are looking for store insurance policies, you can go to the link for it.
insurancepolicystorage 