by FindYourPolicy » Sun Mar 23, 2008 03:32 am
Hello Everyone, I am glad to be here.
My name is Michael Hartmann and I have founded a company that would be extremely beneficial for anyone with Life Insurance. Our service is very consumer friendly and we feel that it is a must for every consumer that gets Life Insurance. Please allow me to explain. http://www.findyourpolicy.com
I am a Life Insurance agent and through my career I have found a void in the system that I felt had to be filled.
Do you realize that approximately20- 30% of Life Insurance Policies go unclaimed? This is due to two reasons. One, the beneficiary knows that they are the beneficiary but they do not know the name of the Insurance Company that holds the policy for their loved ones. So they cannot find it.
And two, the beneficiary does not even know that they are the beneficiary so they do not even look for it. Since there is no National or Statewide database that links all the Insurance Companies together, you basically have to call them all. This is a problem that gets recognized only when it is too late.
FindYourPolicy.com has a solution to this problem. We would register a member's name and address along with two beneficiary's names and addresses (that the member designates), on our website. They would list the company name only that they have Life Insurance with. We never ask for your full Social Security number or any policy numbers or any monetary amounts what so ever.
The concept of our company is to keep the beneficiaries/designated people informed that the members Life Insurance Company name is on our database. We do this by sending an Annual Reminder Post Card by mail (not e-mail) to the beneficiaries/designated people. These Post Cards have no private information on them. They only mention that the member's information can be found on our website. This way the member is assured that their Legacy will always be found.
We encourage you to take a look at our website and view the great benefit of our service. We would love to speak with anyone interested in having our website as a link on their website. A commission can be discussed for anyone that signs up through your designated link. We are very much concerned in benefiting the consumers of Life Insurance.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please feel free to call and ask any questions.
Regards Michael Hartmann
Michael Hartmann
Managing Member
Fort Lauderdale Florida U.S.A.
office: 954.430.9830
Toronto. Canada
office: 416.769.9404
e-mail: Michael[at]findyourpolicy.com
w-site: www.findyourpolicy.com
Post edited - Evan
My name is Michael Hartmann and I have founded a company that would be extremely beneficial for anyone with Life Insurance. Our service is very consumer friendly and we feel that it is a must for every consumer that gets Life Insurance. Please allow me to explain. http://www.findyourpolicy.com
I am a Life Insurance agent and through my career I have found a void in the system that I felt had to be filled.
Do you realize that approximately20- 30% of Life Insurance Policies go unclaimed? This is due to two reasons. One, the beneficiary knows that they are the beneficiary but they do not know the name of the Insurance Company that holds the policy for their loved ones. So they cannot find it.
And two, the beneficiary does not even know that they are the beneficiary so they do not even look for it. Since there is no National or Statewide database that links all the Insurance Companies together, you basically have to call them all. This is a problem that gets recognized only when it is too late.
FindYourPolicy.com has a solution to this problem. We would register a member's name and address along with two beneficiary's names and addresses (that the member designates), on our website. They would list the company name only that they have Life Insurance with. We never ask for your full Social Security number or any policy numbers or any monetary amounts what so ever.
The concept of our company is to keep the beneficiaries/designated people informed that the members Life Insurance Company name is on our database. We do this by sending an Annual Reminder Post Card by mail (not e-mail) to the beneficiaries/designated people. These Post Cards have no private information on them. They only mention that the member's information can be found on our website. This way the member is assured that their Legacy will always be found.
We encourage you to take a look at our website and view the great benefit of our service. We would love to speak with anyone interested in having our website as a link on their website. A commission can be discussed for anyone that signs up through your designated link. We are very much concerned in benefiting the consumers of Life Insurance.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please feel free to call and ask any questions.
Regards Michael Hartmann
Michael Hartmann
Managing Member
Fort Lauderdale Florida U.S.A.
office: 954.430.9830
Toronto. Canada
office: 416.769.9404
e-mail: Michael[at]findyourpolicy.com
w-site: www.findyourpolicy.com
Post edited - Evan
Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 10:57 am Post Subject:
This is a fantastic idea...you have no idea the number of questions we get regarding this exact topic...I think there should be a national data base with all life ins policys (and beneficarys) registered....awesome!
Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 12:19 pm Post Subject:
I was just on the pa deparment of treasury this morning, there are so many policies on there unclaimed it is unreal.
I think this is a great idea that should have been implemented a long time ago. thanks for the information.
Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 01:02 pm Post Subject:
Hello Lori and Goodnatured, Thank you for the positive feedback. We are very excited about the reception that we are getting. With over 300 million people in the US and 47% of them having Life Insurance we feel that we can touch many lives with our service. We truly feel that we will be assisting individual consumers of Life Insurance by giving them a Peace of Mind that their Life Insurance will be found by their loved ones.
Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 06:59 pm Post Subject: New Service
From the surface, this appears to be a good idea, but I can see that this could possibly be just another insurance marketing web site.
If you are really doing this as a service to the consumer, why do you have so many fees?
One time set up fee per Category
1. Life Insurance $30
2. Safety Deposit Boxes $30
3. Annuities $30
4. Investment/Bank Accounts $30
1 year membership $30
5 years membership $125 ($25 per year)
10 years membership $200 ($20 per year)
20 years membership $260 ($13 per year)
30 years membership $300 ($10 per year)
$200 Fee is charged to a Researcher if a member's information is in the Archives.
I'm alittle concerned about the information collected and its use:
If you elect to engage in these activities, however, FindYourPolicy.com may ask that you provide personal information, such as your first and last name, mailing address (including ZIP code), country of residence, e-mail address, and other personal information. When registering via the Site, you may be asked to provide a credit card number.
You also acknowledge that in certain countries or with respect to certain activities, the collection, transfer, storage, and processing of your information may be undertaken by trusted third parties.
FindYourPolicy.com may use this aggregate, nonidentifying statistical data for improving the Site and the Products and Services, providing more relevant experiences to our customers and for statistical analysis.
Are you actually creating a database of potential insurance customers?
Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 08:53 pm Post Subject:
I didn't take the time to read the the site, however I do agree there is a need for a centralized 'list' of all life policys issued and beneficiarys etc....course who funds this is the question? Personal I think the carriers (NOT THE AGENTS) should....but then that's my opinion...
Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 09:24 pm Post Subject:
Hello Insurance Maze,
Thank you for your questions. Please allow me to explain our reasoning for pricing and explanation of collecting data that is written within our Terms and Conditions.
You have written:
If you are really doing this as a service to the consumer, why do you have so many fees?
FindYourPolicy.com's Answer
We have two fees to become a member.
The one time registration fee of $30 per category is to cover initial costs of registering the member along with creating, processing, physically mailing, stamp prices of the Welcome Post Card along with the Annual reminder Post Card, administration(employees and overhead) that is required to start the initial sign up. We also must send out up to 6 cards for the first year for each new member.
The yearly membership fee is broken down to reward anyone that understands the benefit of our service and is interested in signing up for a longer period of time. If they sign up for the 30 years the annual fee is as low as $10 a year. With the definite possibility of Stamp prices, printing and employee wages to go up, we really think that this is a benefit to lock in. Compared to monthly Insurance Premiums we feel that this is well worth the cost of this service. Many of our advisors tell us that our fees are too low, however, we do not want consumers saying “What a great service, but it is too expensive,” we want them saying, “What a great service, where do I sign.”
The reason for the $200 fee to Retrieve the information of a member when they are in the Archives, was to have the member think twice of their designated people before letting their membership lapse. This service was created to constantly keep the members designated people informed of any changes and updates to the legacy that they will be passing on. By letting the membership lapse they not only have stopped reminding their designated people but also revoked the membership privileges which include updating any legacy information.
You have written:
I'm alittle concerned about the information collected and its use:
If you elect to engage in these activities, however, FindYourPolicy.com may ask that you provide personal information, such as your first and last name, mailing address (including ZIP code), country of residence, e-mail address, and other personal information. When registering via the Site, you may be asked to provide a credit card number.
You also acknowledge that in certain countries or with respect to certain activities, the collection, transfer, storage, and processing of your information may be undertaken by trusted third parties.
FindYourPolicy.com may use this aggregate, nonidentifying statistical data for improving the Site and the Products and Services, providing more relevant experiences to our customers and for statistical analysis.
FindYourPolicy.com's Answer:
What we collect:
1. Name and address of members and their designated people/beneficiaries.
2. Last four digits of Social Security/Social Insurance number(for Canadians) and the Date of Birth of the member.
3. The company name of the Life Insurance that the member has Insurance with and the Bank name of where their Safety Deposit Box is located. We only require the names. We are here to aim the designated people in the right direction.
The above information can only be viewed by someone that has the Last Four Digits and the Date of Birth of the member. This information can be found on a death certificate. Even if someone where to penetrate the website, the information is useless to them without a signed sealed Death Certificate and in most cases an Attorney's letter stating you are the executor of the Estate.
When we are informing you that information will be stored by a third party, we wanted members to know that an off site Server was accumulating this information. It is a very secure designated server that we are in control off. However, we do not like to hide anything so we wanted to mention this and make people aware.
We also wanted members to know that we will always try to improve our website/service so we can always be number one in this industry. If any data is collected it is only to make our service more user friendly and our website easier to navigate.
You have written:
Are you actually creating a database of potential insurance customers?
FindYourPolicy.com's Answer:
This service was created specifically to benefit consumers with life insurance, Safety Deposit Boxes, Annuities Bank accounts and Brokerage Accounts. We are only here to remind and inform the people that our members designate to go to our website and find out the names that are relevant. (either Life Insurance company name or Bank name) Please understand that we cannot emphasize enough, that we will never sell or rent our members list. We do not solicit them with insurance quotes or have agents call them in regards to Insurance. The only time we will call them is when they have asked us too.
Hello Lori, to answer your concern also,
We also think that the carriers should fund this service. We are presently working with a PR company that will be assisting us to reach all the carriers. We have been in talks with two of the largest carriers in the United States with great reception. We are here promoting this service on this blog to make agents aware of us also. This way they will start talking, like you all are, and hopefully make their carriers aware of our service. Our goal is to be part of the package, of all the carrier's when selling Life Insurance.
We thank you for all your questions and hope that we answered them to your satisfaction. Please feel free to forward any other concerns, either through our website or through this great blog.
Regards Michael Hartmann
FindYourPolicy.com
Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 12:28 am Post Subject:
Thanks Michael for responding...please keep us updated if there are any changes.
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 01:05 pm Post Subject: http://FindYourPolicy.com
Hello Lori,
It has been a while since I wrote on this blog. You had asked me to keep you updated on our progress. We have been working very closely with a PR company (Mulberry Street Marketing Intelligence) revamping our website and service. Our pricing structure has totally changed to be simpler and easier to understand. The verbiage on most pages has also changed to make it simpler to read and get to the point and importance of our service. We will be doing another press release in a few weeks, with the assistance of Mulberry, and feel that all our hard work to get our service out to the public will definitely be worth it.
Please feel free to view our website http://www.findyourpolicy.com and have all your friends and family take a look at it. We are presently working on our service membership with the American Bankers Association and you will soon see this listed on our Website.
If there are any questions, please feel free to either contact us through the website or through this blog.
Thank you Michael
FindYourPolicy.com
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 08:23 pm Post Subject:
Thanks Michael for popping back in with the update, I'll try and check it out this weekend...thanks again
Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 12:52 pm Post Subject:
Hello Lori, I just wanted to touch base again with you. We now are very proud to be members of the American Bankers Association. This is displayed on our website. Our PR Company is in the process of setting up Radio call in spots for us to answer questions about out new service. We already have a slot with Karen Raaker CNVX 1050 AM Cincinnati on July 12th. We are very excited.
I do have a question for you or anyone that can answer it. Here in the United States, if someone dies, we identify them with their Social Security Number that is listed on their death certificate. How do people in Europe or the UK get identified to the Life Insurance companies when they pass. Do they have a similiar number. I was told that they do have a similiar number however, the last 6 digits change every 10 years. This would make it very hard to identify to claim a policy if this is true. Do you have any ideas?
Thanks Michael
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