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Minutes for SB67 - Committee on Insurance
Short Title
Establishing the unclaimed life insurance benefits act.
Minutes Content for Mon, Mar 18, 2019
Chairperson Vickrey opened the hearing for SB 67.
Assistant Revisor Eileen Ma briefed the members on the bill. The bill enacted the unclaimed life insurance benefits act, a new provision of law. The bill required an insurer to compare its insured person in-force policies, contracts and retained asset accounts against the Social Security Administration's death master file to determine if there were any potential matches. Upon finding a match, and within 90 days, the insurer would be required to confirm the death of the insured person and determine any benefits due the beneficiaries. Unclaimed benefits would be escheated to the state as unclaimed property if a beneficiary was not found (Attachment 1).
James Hall, ACLI, testified as a proponent of the bill. He said the bill was a National Conference of Insurance Legislators model law already enacted in 30 states and more states would be introducing the law in 2019. He said 99 percent of the time the beneficiaries were aware of the insurance and submitted claims. The bill added consumer protection for the other 1 percent to find persons who might otherwise be unaware they were beneficiaries of a life insurance policy. If a beneficiary cannot be located, the life insurer must comply with the the state's Unclaimed Property Act and the bill did not change the obligation to escheat unclaimed property to the state (Attachment 2)
Questions were asked and answered including: what happened if there were no heirs; if an amendment was needed to only require this for policies sold and insured within the state or whether it was for life insurance companies domiciled in the state; what agency was responsible for unclaimed property; what was the annual dollar amount of unclaimed death benefits, dividends and surrender values and other related amounts; and if this was something companies were already doing voluntarily,
There being no other conferees or questions, the chairperson closed the hearing.
The Chairperson asked if there were any changes to the February 18 and 20 draft minutes previously sent to the members. There were none. Representative Neighbor moved to approve the minutes, Representative Cox seconded, motion carried.
