Auto insurance is another area where you might find unclaimed money that feels like a pleasant surprise when you do realize it’s there. With all sorts insurances, actually, you can usually find unclaimed money in some way. With car insurance, it often comes in the form of unclaimed auto insurance premium checks.
When you have a premium check being sent to your home, your auto insurance policy will often try to mail you the check and will notify if their records indicate that it hasn’t been mailed in a month or two. An auto insurance premium check is usually sent to a policyholder after that person cancels their auto insurance policy. They’ll be sent a check then that holds the remaining balance from their policy, which can then be the unclaimed asset that they’ll need to track down.
In many states, the auto insurer will retain the unclaimed check for a set period of time and the policyholder will then receive a letter that they’ll have to respond to that’ll get them their unclaimed asset. So always make sure that you look into what the state laws are for your area so that you don’t go about receiving your money the wrong way. A lot of unclaimed auto insurance checks are often the result of miscommunication at some point in the process. Before you cancel your policy, you should make sure you ask the insurer questions about refunds so that you can try to track it down the best way and know if there are any processes you have to follow to get your money delivered.
Often, the reason that you get a check back from an auto insurance company, it’s because a credit is placed on an account after a cancellation for the unused portion of the account. That unused portion credit is then turned into a check that’s mailed to the policyholder. A check could get lost in the mail or if it was perhaps stolen or destroyed in some way. And if that’s the case, that’s when a policyholder needs to track the account and make sure that they’ll be able to follow the process to receive their unclaimed money.
Before receiving an auto insurance premium, you’ll want to check into your state policies again to see what the rules look like for whether or not the state will hold onto the money for a specified amount of time and that you just need to respond to a letter from the insurer. However, if you moved and didn’t set up a forwarding address for your new home through the post office, you might not receive that letter.
If this is the case, you should check your account online or call the insurer to see what the status of the refund is. If you’re unsure whether or not you’re due a refund through your policy, the insurer will have to keep a record of the check on file to let you know according to state law. Some companies have a five-year hold period, for instance, that says that the insurer cannot transfer any unclaimed money to the company unless it has been over five years since someone inquired about the status of the unclaimed money.
