Lost Life Insurance Policy

dannymyers11

I recently located an old copy life policy document from back in the early 1990's in my Dad's name. He passed away in 1997 and as far as we were aware we'd dealt with the estate in full, until this was recently found. All we have is the L&G reference number on an old Deed of Assignment but my Mum's of the impression this should have been in force at the time of death. We think the policy was worth about £70k so well worth persuing, even years later.

We rang L&G who said the file was not on their system so we'd need to write to their archive people. We did that and they said that as the file was cancelled or surrended more than six years ago, they would have deleted it from their records.

Surely a life policy that was in force at the time of death should be payable even years later? I'm not sure where to take it from here, so any advice would be much appreciated!

Thanks

dunstonh

L&G hold records on their ordinary branch (OB) stuff going back decades whether it is in force or not. However, industrial branch policies sold by insurance companies over the years had very poor record keeping. Often it was just paper based at the local offices and never got transferred on to computer or if it did, the information was limited.

That said, it is not likely to be industrial branch as you wouldnt see an IB policy pay out £70k (most where the penny plans or anything up to around £20pm 10 year plus endowment policies that paid out around £5000 if you had a good one.

If it was OB then you would expect them to still hold a record. The policy document should be able to identify the type of policy it was.

However, there are some issues here.
1 - time bar. Its over 15 years old and if L&G dont play ball then there is little that can be done about it.
2 - if it was in force at the time, then why wasnt it picked up on the bank statements?
3 - if it was cancelled or lapsed after the date of death then the would write to say it was cancelled or lapsed. They dont just vanish.

Loughton_Monkey

I have worked in the Life Assurance Industry most of my working life. If claims staff had a £1 for every original (but old) policy waved at them - believed to be in force, then they would be very rich.

For a start, an extremely high percentage of policies simply lapse through lack of premium payment etc. If there is some residual value, the Insurer will always keep it on their systems. But most of them don't have a value and they never ask for the policy back when they lapse. The existence of a Deed of Assignent implies almost 99% that this was a Mortgage Endowment Policy. Sadly, a huge proportion of these were surrendered in the 1990's.

As Dunstonh has pointed out, it cannot possibly be an IB policy at that Sum Assured. Those dealing with the estate at the time of death couldn't really fail to have noticed a monthly premium being paid right up to the date of death, or even more obvious, a stream of lapse notices would have passed onto your late father's doormat for the next few months. It stretches imagination to believe no-one noticed these.

Insurance Companies are, in my experience, extremely meticulous in keeping live policy records. L&G are a very reputable company. Over the years, like any company, they will have converted from one Computer System to another, and at each conversion, they will have been duty bound to check numbers and amounts of live policies on old and new systems to match absolutely. However, you cannot expect them to have converted all the "old" stuff at every conversion.

They would never have "deleted" a record from their computers. This just never happens. OK, the lapsed, surrendered, matured policies of ancient vintage may not be converted onto the new system, but they will have kept some form of record - usually in the form of a microfiche or even old hard copy print-out, from the old systems, before they are turned off.

But to stimulate them into doing anything really drastic to try and find anything, I think you would need something a bit more than an old copy policy. Clearly the policy had been assigned at some stage. Whoever that was (usually a mortgage lender) should have surfaced at the time, because it would have been security for the debt. Presumably there was no debt. If there was, they would have known about his death and of the assignement. With no debt, the policy would have been 'unassigned' at some stage and the original given back to your father.

If you have records (or knowledge) of a new mortgage taken out by your father at the time of inception of the policy (early 1990's?), then maybe contact the Building Society (or Bank) involved and see if they know anything about it.

magpiecottage

I think it almost certain that a claim would be rejected after all this time.

FOS and the courts are both likely to be sympathetic to a time bar.

However, the assignment suggests that the policy was taken out as security for a loan and the death benefit was paid directly to the lender. If so, then L&G would eventually delete the record.