Translation Results Requested Through Conyac Made Public

State regulators on Thursday took MetLife Inc. to task, saying the insurer used a database that tracked deaths when doing so proved beneficial for one side of the company, but for years didn't use the same database when doing so could have meant more payouts to families of its life-insurance clients who died.

At issue are practices that had the appearance of selective use of the Social Security death database. MetLife and other insurers have maintained they are behaving lawfully. Under policy contracts, insurers aren't required to take steps to determine if a policyholder is still alive, but instead pay claims upon proper notification from beneficiaries or others.


The issue of overdue payouts on life-insurance policies, which has heated up in recent weeks and is now the subject of a multistate investigation, surfaced in April when California and other states said they were looking at whether insurers were tardy in turning over unclaimed financial assets to states.

At Thursday's hearing hosted by Florida's insurance department, senior MetLife executives testified that the company began regularly using the Social Security database to cut off payments to customers under annuities contracts soon after the database became available in the 1980s, and has used it on a monthly basis since the 1990s. Annuities are retirement-income products.