Friday Lost + Found: More Fraud Warnings, Is DMF the Answer?

Massachusetts Warns of Fraudulent Letters -- Massachusetts Treasurer Deborah Goldberg issued a warning that her office has been receiving reports of fraudulent unclaimed property letters seeming to come from the Office of the Commonwealth Treasurer.  As a reminder, states do not charge owners of unclaimed property for searching for and obtaining property from the state.

Life Insurance on Sixty Minutes -- CBS's news program 60 Minutes recently ran a story about life insurers payment practices that is based, in large part, on the mutli-state audits of insurers' unclaimed property practices.  As a result of those investigations, states have become increasingly more insistent that insurers consult the Social Security "Death Master File" in order to determine when life insurance benefits have become payable.

But Is DMF The Answer? -- Though more and more states are requiring DMF searches as part of unclaimed property law or insurance regulatory compliance, some in the industry think that the approach is flawed.  In a recent editorial on InsuranceNewsNet, Michael Babikian voices some of those concerns and offers some alternatives.


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