TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Legal Newsline) — Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, along with the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation and the Florida Department of Financial Services, announced Jan. 30 that subsidiaries of the Ameriprise Group, RiverSource Life Insurance Company and RiverSource Life Insurance Company of New York, will pay $1.5 million in a life claim settlement.
According to an examination conducted by Florida, California, New Hampshire, North Dakota and Pennsylvania, the defendants used the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File (DMF) to stop paying a deceased person’s annuity, but did not use the same information to find and begin paying the deceased’s family or other beneficiaries for life insurance policies.
Florida will receive $111,000 of the total settlement amount. The funds cover the state’s case costs as well as future compliance monitoring.
Florida recently implemented legislation in which insurance companies are required to search the DMF to compare records of both current life insurance policies and those going back to Jan. 1, 1992, when trying to find beneficiaries of a life insurance benefit. According to Bondi’s office, this legislation provides protection for consumers in Florida.