After your death, the last thing you would like to happen to your beneficiaries is the inability to find and submit claims on your life insurance policy. Due to this difficulty, most beneficiaries suffer financial hardship because they cannot find or submit insurance claims. To prevent this from happening, it is important to know how to store and organize your life insurance documents.
While buying life insurance policies is a great step to take in ensuring the financial security of your family after you are gone, ensuring they are aware of where it is when it is needed is also important. Because your life insurance coverage covers your family’s needs, they need to have a copy so they’ll access it when they need it. To make this easy, this write-up contains information on how to store and organize these documents.
Why is Storing My Life Insurance Documents Important?
There are several reasons why storing your life insurance documents is important. A life insurance claim happens only after the death of a policyholder, and it is done by its beneficiaries. During the claim process, the following information would be required:
- Name of the late policyholder.
- Policy number.
- Claimant’s relationship to the late policyholder.
- Details of the deceased’s next of kin, the cause, place, and date of death.
On your insurance documents, your policy information is stated and can be very helpful to your beneficiaries. For this reason, it is important to store your insurance documents online and at home to make accessibility much easier for your family.
What Records Should I Keep?
When organizing your life insurance documents, there are several records you should keep. These records will be useful to your beneficiaries when filing claims. While you keep track of your premiums and changes you have made over time, the following are some of the insurance records you should keep:
- The life insurance company name.
- Policy issue date.
- Policy type
- Policy number.
- Death benefit.
- Details your insurance broker or agent.
- Original life insurance policy location.
If your life insurance policy is gotten through your job, whether it is applied automatically or you have purchased life insurance under the group policy, it is important to keep these records. Ensure you keep the following in record:
- Company or employer’s name.
- Contact details of the person in charge of claim filing.
- Certified number.
- Policy issue date.
- Death benefit amount.
For those who got their life insurance through trade associations, a union, or any organization, it is important to have this on record.
How to Organize Your Life Insurance Documents
While understanding the world of insurance is required, organizing important insurance documents accurately makes the claim-filing process easier for your beneficiaries. It aids quick access to important documents during the claim filing process. To organize your life insurance documents, follow the below steps:
• Create a filling structure
The first thing to do when you want to store and organize life insurance documents is to make use of dividers to separate your insurance documents so your beneficiaries can easily access them without searching through a pile of documents. Here they can easily identify the specific document needed for the claim process.
• Purchase some documenting accessories
To ensure your life insurance document is displayed differently from other documents, documenting accessories can help. These accessories include suspension files, plastic wallets, and even a shredder.
• File labelling
Ensure your files are clearly labeled either with a clear marker or stickers. It can also be stored in categories on different hanging files. This way it can be identified easily when needed.
Where to Store Your Life Insurance Document
Storing documents is very important for every family. To store your life insurance documents, keep one set of these records in a place in your home where it can be easily accessed when needed. Ensure you inform your beneficiaries of where it is kept. Aside from this, you can keep your life insurance documents with your other financial documents, legal documents, or any other place where your beneficiaries are likely to check for them.
Keep another set of your policy documents in a place where it cannot be accessed easily. This is often outside your home in a safe deposit box or with a professional or trustee who can provide it when needed. Ensure these documents are up-to-date including the date they were last updated. This way, these documents can be compared to identify which is more up-to-date.
Common Mistakes While Organizing Lire Insurance Documents
Some mistakes made when organizing your life insurance documents include duplicate files, wrong data naming, improper organization, and failure to update the system. When these mistakes are made, it makes it difficult to be located when needed.
