Life Policy Buyer Sues Over Age Conflict

A financial services firm is suing an insurer over a conflict between the age of a woman stated on the woman’s life insurance policy and the age on her death certificate.

The firm, BMI Financial Group, bought the policy from the insured in 2005. In its complaint, it asserts that, because of the age conflict, it made too many premium payments, received too little for death benefits, or both.

The Miami-based firm contends that the life insurer, ReliaStar Life Insurance Company, should have found and corrected the age conflict.

“ReliaStar owed plaintiff and its predecessors-in-interest a duty to exercise due care in recording and verifying information material to the policy and in representing the results of its recording and verification to plaintiff and its predecessors-in-interest,” BMI says in the complaint, which appears in the litigation tracking database provided by ALM’s Law.Com Radar. Read the full complaint here.

Representatives for ReliaStar were not immediately available to comment on the suit.

What It Means

Some life insurance lawsuits hinge on whether applicants gave the wrong birthdates to qualify for coverage or pay lower rates.

The BMI suit shows that, in some cases, beneficiaries or other parties may find fault with how insurers and their agents record, store or verify customers’ age information.

The Policy

Regina Bell applied for a policy with a $2 million death benefit from ReliaStar in 2002. She received the policy in 2003.

A ReliaStar agent wrote — incorrectly — that Bell was born in 1922 and was 80 years old, according to BMI.

Policy premium bills were supposed to end when the insured turned 100.

After Bell sold the policy to a BMI affiliate, the affiliate paid $27,285 per month to keep the policy in force. By the time Bell died in December 2020, the affiliate had paid about $3 million in premiums.