Often, after a policyholder passes, their beneficiaries are unaware about being included in the policy. There have been cases in the past when insurance companies have not made sufficient efforts to notify beneficiaries. For example, in 2016, the USA Today report claimed that insurers were using death data to stop annuity payments but were not using it to find beneficiaries of life insurance policies. As a result, the largest companies agreed to pay $7.4 billion in undeclared funds to the state of Florida, of which two-thirds were transferred to beneficiaries.
How Infineo works
Insureds upload their insurance policies to the Infineo platform and add the contact information of the beneficiaries. A hash or fingerprint of the policy is stored on the public Provenance blockchain, but personal data remains in an encrypted external database. The system is not directly connected to insurers for now, so any changes to the policy must be reported to the insurance company.
Infineo is planning to make money by creating a secondary market and supporting lending against insurance policies. The death notification service is currently free.
Photo courtesy of public sources
