To protect your husband, your children or your grandchildren, you have taken out life insurance in the event of death. It reassures you to know that they won’t be left with nothing if something bad happens to you.. But so that they can benefit from it without any problem, there are a number of elements to which attention must be paid. In an episode of Restricted zone, broadcast on Sunday January 14, 2024 on M6, the show’s journalists were interested in this question of foresight, which can quickly become problematic. In the report, we discovered Thierry’s story. The latter had recently received a letter informing him that his mother had taken out life insurance. He therefore became the beneficiary of 15,000 euros, which was paid directly into his bank account. Problem: his mother died more than thirty years agoand it was at this period, when he was just starting out in working life and found himself an orphan, that this sum would have been most useful to him.
Be as precise as possible when purchasing life insurance
A problem which is not so rare, explained the journalists of Restricted zone. In question, poorly applied insurers, who do not sufficiently provide the subscriber’s contact details, to the point that the subscriber is sometimes too difficult to identify and that insurers, in the absence of a beneficiary to whom to pay the sum, simply keep it. To avoid these abuses, Michel Guillot, a former banker who created an association to help bank and insurance users, gives advice on the elements that must be added when subscribing to life insurance.
According to him, it is imperative to give precise contact details of the beneficiary(ies) so that they are as identifiable as possible. Indeed, computer searches cannot find entities such as “your spouse” or “your children” if personal information (first name, last name, marital status, place of birth) is not precisely indicated. in the same way, we should not hesitate to update this information regularly, for example when a new child arrives. Finally, to protect yourself from the risk that your beneficiaries will never see the color of your savings, you must also be sure to add the words “failing that, my heirs” for any life insurance subscription. This way, you can take out a contract with complete peace of mind if that’s what you want.