I would expect substantially every adjuster at every life insurance company in the United States to pay a claim for a life insurance policy which a non-specialist might think was bound but which was not factually bound yet given a death for any reason but suicide absent fairly clear indications of insurance fraud.
I realize technologists feel like insurance companies are malevolent entities, but they're a) highly regulated financial institutions b) staffed by professionals in risk management with c) significant exposure to negative public attention.
Additionally, every insurance regulator has Thou Shalt Not #)%( Around With Paying Out Life Insurance Claims as their #1 rule, principally for historical reasons.
Coming to the opposite intuition on this requires one to believe that, for an actuarially insignificant improvement in their loss rates so small as to be undetectable, insurance companies like jousting with regulators and the public while screaming "Catch me if you can, suckers!" (Indeed, when it came to light that some insurance companies were just sitting on unclaimed payments for small-dollar life insurance policies, the regulators had them reopen the books going back sixty years.)
>I realize technologists feel like insurance companies are malevolent entities,
No, it isn't that. I feel like every large company behaves almost always like a machine whose job is to print money, with no consideration to morals, ethics, or decency unless they believe the good PR from such will cause them to be able to print more money.
I believe this because it is how they (usually, not quite always of course) behave, as they are beholden to their investors to print money.
Interesting, given that health insurance is notorious for the opposite (failing to pay for things that the purchaser might resonably expect to be covered).
>(Indeed, when it came to light that some insurance companies were just sitting on unclaimed payments for small-dollar life insurance policies, the regulators had them reopen the books going back sixty years.)
Doesn't this undermine your point? Insurers were plenty happy to sit on life insurance payments and not even attempt to figure out who to pay them to, thus betraying what you state as their #1 rule and jousting with regulators and the public over actuarially insignificant improvements in their loss rates.
I realize technologists feel like insurance companies are malevolent entities, but they're a) highly regulated financial institutions b) staffed by professionals in risk management with c) significant exposure to negative public attention.
Additionally, every insurance regulator has Thou Shalt Not #)%( Around With Paying Out Life Insurance Claims as their #1 rule, principally for historical reasons.
Coming to the opposite intuition on this requires one to believe that, for an actuarially insignificant improvement in their loss rates so small as to be undetectable, insurance companies like jousting with regulators and the public while screaming "Catch me if you can, suckers!" (Indeed, when it came to light that some insurance companies were just sitting on unclaimed payments for small-dollar life insurance policies, the regulators had them reopen the books going back sixty years.)