How Should I Keep My Life Insurance Records Organized?

Nobody wants there to be any problems for your beneficiaries when they try to find and submit the claim form for your life insurance after you die.To simplify things and prevent this, you need to keep at least 2 copies in two different places of your life insurance papers.Doing this makes it less likely to lose them through a flood, fire or from accidentally throwing them out, thus making it more likely for your beneficiaries to find them after your death.For every individual life insurance policy that you have it's important that you record a few types of information.Things such as the full name of the company whom issued your policy, state and city for the company's home office who issued your policy, policy number and date it was issued, amount of death benefit, policy type such as term and whole, your life insurance policy's original location and U.S headquarters and name of group if it happens to belong to a group.You may automatically receive life insurance through your employer.You may also be offered the chance to purchase extra life insurance from your employer through a group policy.And upon doing this you may also become eligible to purchase life insurance through a group policy from a trade association or union or other types of groups you might belong to such as automobile clubs and college alumni associations.For any of these type of life insurance benefits you should keep the following information. the name of group or employer who sponsors your insurance, person or office that needs to be contacted when you need to file a claim, certificate number, date that the insurance started and amount of death benefit.Sometimes a financial program that is mostly created for income and other reasons have death benefits as an additional feature.This could include annuities, pensions, disability insurance, worker's compensation and travel insurance, etc.For this type of program you should keep the following information. type of policy that contains death benefit attached to it's features, full name of life insurance company who issued your policy, state and city for the home office where your policy was issued, policy number, date policy was issued, amount of death benefit, the broker or agent's name and address who sold you the policy and the location of your original life insurance policy.Lending institutions and credit cards will sometimes offer you life insurance in order to pay off any of your outstanding loans in the event that you die.For all of the life insurance benefits on your life who's dedicated in paying a loan off for you, you should keep the following information. full name of lending institution, loan number and date it was issued, name of office of person you should contact when the time comes for a claim to be filed and policy number.You should plan to safely keep a set of the records in your house, preferably in a place where others who needed the information could easily find it.Make sure that the people are informed of where it is.Another set of the records should be kept somewhere else such as a safe deposit box, with a professional or relative that you can depend on.Each page should have the date that they were last updated on.This way if the copy in your home is different from the other one then you'll be able to tell the newer one from the older.