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Life
Insurance Storage
How should I organize and store my life, disability and other insurance records?
The last thing you want to happen after you die
is for your beneficiaries to be unable to locate and submit a claim
on your insurance. Here is some helpful advice for storing your
documents.
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The last thing you want to happen after you die is for your
beneficiaries to be unable to locate and submit a claim on
your insurance. To prevent this, you should have copies
of your insurance records in at least two places. This
is to make it less likely that you’ll lose them (to fire,
flood, accidental discarding, etc.) and more likely that,
after your death, your beneficiaries will find them.
What information should I keep?
For each individual life insurance policy you
should record the following information:
 | The
full name of the insurance company that issued the
policy |
| The
city and Province of the home office of the company that
issued the policy |
| The
name and Canadian headquarters of the group, if the issuing
company belongs to a group of companies |
| The
policy number |
| The
date the policy was issued |
| The
amount of the benefit |
| The
name and address of the agent/broker who sold you the
policy |
| The
type of policy (e.g., term, whole life, etc.) |
| The
location of the original insurance policy |
You might have life insurance automatically from your
employer. Your employer also might offer you the chance to
buy additional life insurance under a group policy. And you
might be eligible to buy life insurance under a group policy
from your union or trade association or other group you
belong to (such as a college alumni association or an
automobile club). For each of these life insurance benefits,
you should record the following information:
| The
name of the employer or group that sponsors the
insurance |
| The
office or person to contact when it’s time to file a
claim |
| The
certificate number (comparable to the policy number
under an individual policy) |
| The
date the insurance was started |
| The
amount of the death benefit |
Sometimes financial programs that are mainly designed for
income or other purposes have death benefits as additional
features. This might include pensions, annuities, workers
compensation programs, disability insurance, travel accident
insurance, etc. For each such program, you should record the
following information:
| The
type of policy that has a death benefit as part of its
features |
| The
full name of the life insurance company that issued the
policy |
| The
city and Province of the home office of the company that
issued the policy |
| The
policy number |
| The
date the policy was issued |
| The
amount of the death benefit |
| The
name and address of the agent/broker who sold you the
policy |
| The
location of the original insurance policy |
Credit cards and lending institutions may offer
insurance to pay off your outstanding loans in the event of
your death or disability. For each insurance benefit on you
dedicated to paying off a loan, you should record
| The
full name of the lending institution through which you
obtained the insurance |
| The
loan number and issue date of the loan |
| The
name of the person or office to contact when it’s time
to file a claim |
| The
policy number of the insurance policy that pays off
the loan |
Where should I keep the information?
Keep one set of these records in your home, in a place where
others who need this information are likely to find it (and
after you put the information there, tell the people who’ll
need it where it is). This might be with your other
financial records (such as income tax, checking account,
investment records), with your other legal papers (such as a
copy of your will, living will, health care proxy, etc.), or
anywhere your survivors are likely to look for them.
Keep another set of these records “off site”—that is,
outside of your home, perhaps in a safe deposit box, or with
a professional or a relative who can be counted on to
produce them when they’re needed.
On each page, record the date on which the information was
last updated. That way, if the copy in your home differs
from the one in the safe deposit box, it’s easy to tell
which is the more current. |
How often should I review my policy?
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