IN A NUTSHELL:

LifeDB’s goal is to bridge the gap between a life insurance policy and the intended beneficiary. Its software makes it easier and faster to facilitate the payment of a life insurance claim.

ABOUT THE BUSINESS:

Relatively few people outside the life insurance industry may realize it, but more than half of life insurance policies go unclaimed because the beneficiaries are unaware that their family member had insurance or that a policy existed.

Three partners are building a technology solution that will provide a searchable database and notification system aimed at significantly increasing the number of beneficiaries who actually collect on their policies. 

The venture, LifeDB LLC, has been under development for the past two years by Brent Williams and Scott Venerable, two seasoned Principal Financial Group Inc. investment representatives who operate their own advisory firm, R&D Plan Specialists.

“We’re not your typical startup,” said Williams. Both he and Venerable are seasoned top producers for Principal and have more than 20 years of sales, marketing and business ownership experience. A third partner in the startup is Jason Dively, former Pleasant Hill mayor and past city council member, who will provide sales and marketing expertise.

“We’ve used our own money to this point; we have successful businesses outside of this,” Williams said. “It just happens to be a passion and ties into our personal business that we have, which is designed to review and design personal and business financial plans. So this product and this solution works very well hand in hand with what our actual business is.”

Payment of unclaimed policies has been a hot topic for the past couple of years within the life insurance industry. In 2011 the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) established a task force, and since then several major insurers have entered into multistate agreements to pay tens of millions of dollars in unpaid claims to beneficiaries as well as settlements to the states. 

A separate NAIC task force recently released its recommendations to revise the life insurance provisions of the Uniform Unclaimed Property Act of 1995.

Williams’ initial goal was to create a life insurance notification product, called BeneNotify, as an added benefit for his clients. The product would inform beneficiaries upon the death of a client of all the assets and accounts the client so that proper claims could be filed.

Venerable, meanwhile, had created a searchable database (www.lifeinsurancedatabase.com) for locating insurance policies. “So really it was taking our two ideas and merging them together,” Williams said.

LifeDB is also about helping insurance companies get better at what they do from a claims processing perspective, Venerable said. The startup plans to offer a BeneCertify product that would provide a third-party verification service for life insurers to increase consumers’ confidence.

“If we get the number (of unclaimed policies) down to 5 or 10 percent, life insurance companies would have, I believe, a tough time managing the claims process itself. So with our BeneCertify process, we literally take the claims process off of their plate,” Venerable said.

Having lived and worked throughout their careers in Des Moines, the partners hope to make the connection with a Des Moines-based insurer.

“We’re in the life insurance capital of the country, and it would be great to see our solution that could potentially impact a large percentage of Americans get kick-started here in Des Moines,” Venerable said. “We really want to give them first opportunity to our services.”