Phoenix Group, the UK’s largest specialist consolidator of closed life and pension funds, announced today that it has undertaken a programme of extensive tracing work to reunite 2,380 unclaimed policies with their rightful owner or next of kin. The insurer’s tracing work started in September 2016 and has so far reunited policies with a total value of £12.7 million.

These customer policies could have been left unclaimed for many years but Phoenix has introduced a proactive campaign to ensure the policyholder, or their estate, receives the benefits. Lost policies often result from policyholders forgetting the policy exists as the insurer is unable to get in touch with them, most commonly as a result of lifestyle changes such as moving or getting married.

Phoenix has used a number of methods to locate these owners including paying for external tracing companies, obtaining the death certificate, probate, copy of wills and DWP tracing.

Lost policies can be a particular issue for closed life books as policies under their stewardship can be many years old. When customers cannot be contacted, the funds remain with the insurer but will always be available for payment when the policyholder is traced or comes forward. For anyone that thinks they may have a policy with Phoenix that they no longer have the details for, they can use our historical brand search tool at http://www.phoenixlife.co.uk/customer-centre which will provide the contact details for their policy.

David Woollett, Customer Director at Phoenix Life says: “Policyholders have diligently saved for many years in their policies, and it is a tragedy that the benefits may have been left unclaimed. We are delighted to have been able to repatriate so many of these lost policies with their rightful owners.

“Keeping personal information up to date with any financial service provider would ensure that customers don’t miss any communications and would ease the processing of claims in retirement or maturity”.

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Enquiries

Shellie Wells
Head of Corporate Communications
Phoenix Group
020 3735 0922 / 07872 414 137
shellie.wells@thephoenixgroup.com

Darcy Lillie
Media Relations Consultant
Phoenix Group
020 3735 0102 / 07814 773 280
darcy.lillie@thephoenixgroup.com

Notes to editors

Phoenix Group is the UK’s largest specialist consolidator of closed life funds with over 5.6 million policyholders and £74 billion of assets held by the Group’s life companies, including the acquired Abbey Life, AXA Wealth and SunLife businesses. The Group employs around 900 people split across the Group, with around 600 based at Wythall, its main operating centre