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Life Insurance Death Claim

The sum assured paid to the nominee on the death of the life assured, under a term, endowment or money-back policy.

Also calledTerm Insurance Claim · Endowment Claim · Nominee Claim

File/Claims library/Health, life and accident/Illness, hospital and life

First thing, todayTell the insurer as soon as the death certificate can be applied for, and keep the policy documents and the premium record together.

Three deadlines
  • Tell the insurer now, not after the assessment.
  • Pre-authorisation, or intimation before a planned admission, and within the hours the policy allows after an emergency one.
  • Every document within the time the insurer asks for it.
An itemised hospital bill, an authorisation form and a health card
An itemised hospital bill, an authorisation form and a health card. An illustration.

When you would claim

  • Death of the life assured, from any cause the policy covers
  • Death within the first years, where the claim is investigated
  • An accidental death benefit under a rider
  • A claim where the nomination is out of date or disputed

What insurers most often rely on

  • Non-disclosure at proposal, which is the ground almost every early claim is investigated on
  • Policy lapsed for non-payment, or in a grace period nobody tracked
  • Age proof not accepted, where the age at entry was misstated
  • Suicide inside the period the policy excludes it for
  • Nomination out of date, which delays the payment rather than defeating the claim

A ground is not a verdict. Most of these are questions about what was written on a proposal form years ago, and after three years the insurer is very largely out of time to ask them.

The documents

nothing here is urgent, and all of it is exact

10 items, and none of them is in a hurry. What a life claim turns on is that each one is exact and consistent with the last: one date of birth, one spelling of a name, one address.

  • Claim form signed by the nominee
  • Original policy document, or a declaration where it is lost
  • Death certificate issued by the municipal authority
  • Nominee's identity proof and relationship proof
  • Medical records, where death followed an illness
  • FIR, post-mortem and police report, where death was unnatural
  • Employer's certificate or the last medical attendant's certificate
  • Cancelled cheque and bank details of the nominee, for the NEFT payment
  • Details of any other insurance covering the same life
  • The sum assured claimed, with any bonus, rider or accident benefit set out separately
The three-year lineWrite down the date the policy commenced, the date of death, and the date you told the insurer. The first two decide whether the claim is early or not, and that single fact governs how much the insurer is still allowed to question.

Next

What the first day looks like

There is no playbook for this and there will not be one, because the first day is short. Tell the insurer or the TPA inside the hours the policy allows, keep every original the hospital gives you, and do not let a discharge happen before the pre-authorisation query has been answered in writing.

Call 92514 56334

The sum assured is the sum assured

Nothing is averaged, nothing is depreciated and nothing is assessed. What is paid is the sum assured plus whatever bonus or rider attaches to it. What a life claim turns on instead is disclosure, and the three years after which the policy can no longer be questioned on it.

Filed under: Health, life and accident · Illness, hospital and life

Claims that sit next to this one

the same life, on another policy

Group Term Life

the same claim, on an employer's policy

Critical Illness

a payout while the person is alive

Personal Accident

death by accident, on another policy

Claim on a policy of somebody who has died, and the questions started? Report a loss or call 92514 56334.