Purging Ancient Accounts

[brinkerdana]

While review accounts to be purged, I noticed there are some old (2000 to 2004 effective dates) LIFE insurance policies.  I'm not sure how to handle these.  Should they be excluded from any purge utility? 

What is everyone else doing with these?

[Gene Foraker]

I don't purge life policies.   Mainly because expiration dates were not accurately entered or renewals tracked.   If you tracked renewals accurately, then go ahead.   On the other hand, they probably don't take up that much space.

[brinkerdana]

I don't purge life policies.   Mainly because expiration dates were not accurately entered or renewals tracked.   If you tracked renewals accurately, then go ahead.   On the other hand, they probably don't take up that much space.

I think we've come to the same conclusion.  Thinking of adding a Market Plan code for LIF so they don't show up on my accounts-to-purge list.

[Terry Evans]

Agreed.  On Life policies there may not be any activity for years, no correpsondence, no commission etc.  It's sometimes hard to know if they are active or not without contacting the carrier.  Most life policies can't be looked up online (with my carriers anyway).  We just let them Fade away . . . . . .

[Conan_Ward]

Are we talking customers with dead life policies to hide and just dead accounts or just dead policies on otherwise live accounts?

There is the inactive customer feature in 2013 that helps with the former...

[Gene Foraker]

Are we talking customers with dead life policies to hide and just dead accounts or just dead policies on otherwise live accounts?

There is the inactive customer feature in 2013 that helps with the former...

The problem is that you never really know for sure if the policy is dead or not.   Companies often only pay commission for a set number of years and don't let the agent know if or when it is cancelled.   Most agencies feel it is not worth the effort to keep accurate info on old policies.   

It is not uncommon for widows to call us to ask if we ever wrote a policy for their husband 20 years after we lost the PL account.   

[Conan_Ward]

Well, thats why i'm asking if there are other active accounts. With 2013 you could make it inactive and it hides from reports and the normal client list, but you don't need to purge anything, so in case you do get that bit later, its still easy to pull back up in the system.

It also hit me I misread things in the OP about purging, so I can be largely ignored. I thought it was asking about purging them, not about excluding them from the purge.

[brinkerdana]

There are several old life policies, inactive accounts going back to the early 90s.  As mentioned, most agents never hear from the company or insured again.  My first thought was that if someone wanted to make a claim against the policy decades later, they'd contact the company and assumed we'd include them in our purge of ancient accounts.  Second thought was that something could possibly come up years later and that we should keep them and just continue to mark them inactive. 

If it is decided by the owner to keep these life policies/accounts out of the purge, how can I mark them so they don't get purged?  Change the expiration dates on the policies?  I had planned to run my report using marketing codes and thought adding a code for life insurance thinking these accounts could be filtered out of the purge.

If I remember correctly, the purge utilities (activities, accounting, etc.) are done by date.

I think I've answered my own question.  Yes, to LIF marketing code and yes to changing the expiration dates so the accounts don't get included in the purge utilities.

Right?