Many tasks in life are repeated events: registering for school, looking for a job, and so forth. Some events in life are more rare and are of greater overall significance, such as getting married. Because these kinds of events occur more seldom, people may not the steps involved in carrying them out. Filing a life insurance claim is one of those kinds of events, and deserves no less than a complete familiarization with the process prior to its ever being needed.
Reduce the Burden
Unless you actually work in the industry, filing a claim on a life insurance policy is not something you do everyday. In fact, for most people, it’s the sort of thing they hopefully only need do a couple of times in their lives. There isn’t much familiarity with the process when the time comes, and each assurance company has its own guidelines to follow, which can add greater confusion if a prior claim filing was experienced through a different company using different guidelines.
On top of it all is the attempt by claim filers to cope emotionally with the gravity of the circumstances, while trying to carry on with required business tasks, such as submitting a claim to an insurance company. Trying to follow the company’s directives and figure out the details while being clouded with mourning can be a challenge. As a result, perhaps wrong phone numbers are dialed, or address numbers become transposed on an envelope about to be mailed to the insurance company. The claim itself may suffer from the distracted and possibly mistaken inputting of required information.
These reasons are why it’s a good idea to take a portion of an evening to sit down with your family members and discuss the process of claim filing. It’s a smart idea to confirm that each person who can make a claim–typically a spouse or children–has the opportunity to review the process a few times, so that they will have at least some preparation when the day arrives that their assistance is needed.
And, really, when the time comes when your family members need to file a claim on your life insurance, you won’t be there to help them through the process and explain what needs to happen. Taking them through the steps now will reduce their difficulties when the actual filing has to occur.
Methods of Claim Filing
The specifics of how to file a claim on your assurance policy are unique to your cover firm’s own requirements and directives, but in general, there are a few basic parts to the equation.
The policy itself must be readily available, or knowledge of its location must be known to family members entrusted with making a claim. Official notation of the death must be registered, and a death certificate obtained. Your survivors need to be able to locate the entry number and registration district of the certificate. Generally, only a spouse or children can submit a claim for consideration.
There are often additional requirements, such as proof that the beloved’s departure happened within the domestic mainland, and didn’t take place while using paid passage, such as a transportation hire.
It’s a good idea to have set aside references to information that will likely be requested upon the claim’s filing. Identification documents of the deceased (including year of birth) and of the claim filer, evidence of the relationship between the filer and the policyholder (for instance, a marriage certificate), account number of the bank to which payout funds should be released, and, if it exists, a copy of the deceased’s will.
Today, life cover claims can be filed electronically with many assurance firms. Still, certain companies still require copies of documents to be posted through the mail, and you might prefer that option, regardless of technological advancements.
A great way to set up preparations for your family members is to contact the assurance company yourself, and ask them to demonstrate to you, step by step, the process it specifically requires for submitting a claim on a life cover policy. The better you understand the system, the better you can explain it to those who will be carrying out the procedure, and the smoother the transaction will be.
Know Your Claim
Making sure your loved ones know the details of filing a life insurance claim is yet another gift from you to them: it helps to release at least some of the anxiety they will be experiencing as they go about the business of managing final arrangements.