Posted on Wednesday, 5th October 2011 by Keane Unclaimed Property Team

Over the past few months, Keane has blogged about some of the issues that have recently come to light in the life insurance industry – and how many life insurance companies have found themselves under scrutiny from a beneficiary communication and unclaimed property perspective. As a result, the life insurance industry is starting to see some regulatory changes that will impact the way they communicate with policyholders and beneficiaries. In fact, just last week, California passed two laws intended to tighten consumer protections on retained asset accounts (RAAs).

One of the laws, S.B. 599, repeals the current law that had previously allowed insurers to require beneficiaries to receive their life insurance proceeds only through an RAA. The new law now requires life insurers to obtain a beneficiary’s written declaration as to how he/she wants to receive a benefit payment. California State Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones asked the state legislature to pass this law because of the issues RAA accounts can present. Retained asset accounts appear similar to a checking account, however retailers do not readily accept RAA drafts, and some RAAs have minimum draft requirements. In addition, RAAs are not protected by federal deposit insurance, making the accounts not only hard to access, but also not ideal from a consumer perspective.

Under the new law, insurers can also set up an RAA if the beneficiary fails to make a decision and if the declaration form clearly disclosed that the default benefits payment mechanism was an RAA.

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Posted on Wednesday, 23rd March 2011 by Keane Unclaimed Property Team

Kelmar Associates, LLC has recently (first few months of 2011) been demanding significantly more information from holders with an emphasis on potential equity and debt related properties during its escheatment audits. Previously, Kelmar’s Initial Document Requests (IDRs) commonly asked some limited scope questions about the Holder’s contractual relationship, experience or history with their transfer agent. Kelmar’s auditing procedures are now requesting more detailed and comprehensive information concerning the Holder’s securities-related property types.

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Posted on Thursday, 19th August 2010 by Keane Unclaimed Property Team

Time and time again at Keane Unclaimed Property, advisory firms will come to us in an effort to avoid dormant account escheatment by finding a client who has essentially disappeared.

Maybe they’ve moved to a new address without notifying their investment firm, perhaps they’ve removed the IRA from their brokerage account or even passed on. Nonetheless, no matter what the situation, firms are constantly trying to track down clients whose accounts are inactive or even dormant. Read More »

Posted on Wednesday, 28th July 2010 by Keane Unclaimed Property Team

At this point, you probably know that many organizations are carrying unclaimed property and are in danger of  escheat audits. But why do companies seem to be so willing to risk non-compliance? While many companies are aware of unclaimed property compliance requirements, some will just wait until they get hit with an escheat audit to do anything. Others understand the risk, but do not want to allocate the time or resources needed to proactively define their liability and reduce it.  And some are simply uninformed of their compliance obligations.

Debbie Zumoff, Chief Compliance Officer at Keane Unclaimed Property, recently spoke with John Cummings, Editor of Business Finance and Author of the BizTaxBuzz Blog, about escheat audits and why they seem to be in the future of so many companies.  Click here to read the whole post. 

Two of the downsides to not reporting unclaimed property are penalties and interest, which can quickly add up and even double the amount of underlying liability. For most companies, this can mean big losses. However, there are number of audit risk red flags that companies can look out for when it comes to unclaimed property. These include not reporting all property types, using inappropriate dormancy triggers, failing to perform state-mandated due diligence and many others. If companies are aware of these red flags upfront and keep them in mind when it’s time to file unclaimed property each year, they can better prepare for and defend against escheat audits and significantly reduce risk to their organization.

Go from Escheat Audits back to the blog

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Posted on Wednesday, 21st October 2009 by Keane Unclaimed Property Team

Keane Unclaimed Property recently announced a partnership for escheat, unclaimed property reporting and compliance consulting services with UHY Advisors SALT, LLC (UHY), a professional services firm specializing in state and local tax and business consulting. UHY Advisors, Inc. and its subsidiary entities have more than 1,200 professionals providing services from offices across the United States and is ranked as the 15th largest professional services firm providing tax and business consulting in the country by Accounting Today. UHY will provide expanded unclaimed property compliance and risk management services with Keane Unclaimed Property.

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Posted on Tuesday, 15th September 2009 by Keane Unclaimed Property Team

This post by Gail Warner, President of Keane Unclaimed Property, appeared on Keane Unclaimed Property’s corporate blog, “KeaneObservations” written by Peter Teuten, Keane Unclaimed Property’s risk management expert.

I’m picking up where Peter left off last week regarding the topic of unclaimed property audit and how it relates to risk management and compliance.

The words audit and risk go hand in hand. The word “audit” alone makes anyone in a corporate finance or risk management department cringe and begin vigorous preparations (and palpitations!). But in the case of an unclaimed property audit, that natural reaction tends to be a mix of confusion and uncertainty. It’s much more important now that companies understand the drivers of unclaimed property risk because audits are on the rise. Depending on state laws (and the extent of some state’s budget woes), unclaimed property offers states an attractive source of alternate capital (you see, much of the money states collect from companies is often used on state programs that would otherwise not happen or would require the use of additional tax dollars).

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