Til Death Do Us Part

A standard view of business ethics says that businesses have a contractual responsibility to clients and a fiduciary responsibility to investors. For instance,insurance companies have an obligation to pay all claims filed by beneficiaries, but also to make a profit for investors. Clearly, these two obligations pull insurance companies in opposite directions. Preliminary investigations by state agencies in Florida and California have found that some insurance companies have identified deceased policy holders to whom they can cut off retirement payments, while at the same time conveniently overlooked the same dead policy-holders who might have had beneficiaries, and insurers are not obligated to pay if no one files a claim for life insurance policies. In 2009, Verus Financial LLC began approaching State governments, offering, for a cut of any take, to seek out insurance companies that have failed to pay out on life insurance policies. In case these policies do go unclaimed, whatever remains of the policy reverts to the state.