DMF – PBI Research Services

Why the DMF isn’t Adequate for Insurance Companies

Identifying deaths has become harder for insurance companies. In 2011, a change to the SSA Death Master File (DMF) fundamentally altered the Death Audit landscape resulting in challenges to Death Audit providers accompanied by a significantly increased burden placed on insurance companies to accurately identify deaths of policyholders. Because of this, missed deaths are leading to overpayments for insurance companies in their Pension Risk Transfer (PRT) and Structured Settlements lines of business. In Long Term Care (LTC), [...]

How Do You Handle False Positives from the Death Master File?

Death Audit false positives are defined as identifying a decedent who isn’t actually deceased. False positives result in unplanned organizational expense and incorrect payment stoppage. As a result, false positives can be painful to both those sending and receiving ongoing planned payments, e.g. pension plans/participants and beneficiaries, insurance companies/annuitants. Minimizing false positives while maximizing number of decedents identified should be the goal of any Death Audit system. However, it is virtually impossible to avoid [...]