A recently unsealed whistleblower complaint alleges that life insurance companies MetLife Inc. and Prudential Inc. violated the Minnesota False Claims Act by holding onto unclaimed benefits which the companies were required to turn over to the state’s unclaimed property unit.  The state, which is conducting a larger investigation into the practices of life insurance companies, suspects that the insurers never attempted to contact the families of beneficiaries in order to pay out the unclaimed benefits.  According to the Minnesota Commerce Commissioner, his department believes the companies use a national death database in order to stop paying on annuity policies when a policy holder dies, but not to trigger payment of benefits.  Since the investigation began, the insurers have allegedly been contacting the families of beneficiaries “out of the blue” to pay out previously unclaimed benefits.  A spokesman from Prudential responded that “We make a best effort to find people who may have died.”

Prudential agreed to a multi-million dollar, multi-state settlement to resolve similar allegations in California and Florida earlier this year.

Read the entire article, “Lawsuit seeks millions from insurers in policy claims”