January 30, 2017
Florida announced a $1.5 million life claim settlement agreement reached with subsidiaries of the
Ameriprise Group,
RiverSource Life Insurance Company and
RiverSource Life Insurance Company of New York. The settlement agreement focuses on the one-sided use of the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File to stop paying a deceased person’s annuity, but not using the same information to find and begin paying the deceased’s family or other beneficiaries for life insurance policies. Florida, California, New Hampshire, North Dakota and Pennsylvania conducted the examination into the companies that led to this agreement. Florida’s allocation of the multi-state settlement payment by Ameriprise is more than $111,000, which covers the costs of the investigations and future compliance monitoring. To date, state insurance regulators have either reached settlements or concluded the investigation of 28 of the top 40 companies constituting 80 percent of the total market. Efforts continue to be focused on the examination of the remaining 12 insurers. FL