Tracing absent policyholders

Every year, a number of policyholders fail to receive their full entitlements, often because they have forgotten to update their contact information. AEGON is committed to tracing all legitimate beneficiaries.

Inevitably, however, some policyholders cannot be traced. AEGON estimates that 1.0% of first-time pensioners did not receive payments due to them in 2009 because they had not updated their contact information, down from 2.3% in 2008 and 3.0% in 2007. In the United States, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom - the company's three main markets - AEGON takes steps to ensure that benefits and entitlements due to these customers remain accessible for as long as possible:

• In the United States, which because of its size has the highest number of such customers, all benefits remain in policyholders' accounts and are not added to the company's income.
• In the Netherlands, customers never lose their right to claim, no matter how much time elapses.
• In the United Kingdom, unclaimed benefits are transferred to an external fund only when absent policyholders reach the age of 75.

At the end of 2009, AEGON estimates that it was retaining EUR 9.3 million in unclaimed benefits because of missing or unknown addresses, up from EUR 9.2 million in 2008 and a small fraction of total benefits and claims paid during the year. Experience has shown that the value of individual policies where the beneficiary cannot be traced is generally low, less than EUR 100 a year.

AEGON companies use a number of different techniques to trace absent beneficiaries. These include consulting government registers and telephone directories, online searches and placing advertisements in newspapers and other publications.