How do I make a life insurance claim and how is it processed?
To make an insurance claim for life insurance, assuming you're the beneficiary, you would contact the insurance agent. The insurance agent would give you some suggestions. Number one, you need to get several copies of a death certificate, you might have insurance with two or three or four companies. Each company will want an original purple-inked death certificate, they don't accept copies, they have to be an original. The second thing is they'll want a claim form filled out, you'll say who you are as the beneficiary, the cause of death, and you'll submit that to the insurance company. If everything is legitimate and especially if the policy is over two years old, the insurance company could issue a check in two or three days. Sometimes they hold off paying the claim for a week or two or three weeks until the doctor gives an official cause of death because ultimately the insurance company has to make sure that they're paying a claim to the proper person. For example, some beneficiaries have killed the insured to collect the money. If there's any potential of that the insurance company will hold off paying the claim, because if they pay the claim to the wrong person, they have to pay it all over again to the right person. So insurance companies are a little bit careful, but in general it's a very quick process. If the claim is delayed for some reason, the money is earning interest from the time of the death. Many, many years ago it took almost nine months for one of my clients' beneficiaries to qualify because there were things that were very unusual in this case, and the interest rate at that time was very, very high, and the interest was almost $70,000. The insurance company paid the death benefit, which was several million dollars, plus about $70,000 of interest.
