RJ and Makay

Forty of the largest U. S. life insurance companies may owe policy beneficiaries more than $1 billion, according to Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty.  McCarty made the claim after participating in an evidentiary hearing last Thursday investigating how life insurance companies apply the Death Master File, a Social Security Administration list of deceased persons.

MetLife, the nation’s largest life insurer, has been using the Death Master File since the late 1980s to determine when to halt annuity payments to its clients.  Only since 2007 has it used the file to determine whether an insured customer had died so that his or her beneficiaries could receive payment, according to testimony at the hearing. And not until 2010 was it done in any systematic and comprehensive way.