Life Insurance Registry

The life insurance registry is a publicly accessible file that provides certain information to interested parties about life insurance contracted by a person. If you want to know under what circumstances you can make a consultation, how and why, keep reading.

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What is the life insurance registry?

As we have already mentioned, the life insurance registry is, broadly speaking, a file. And of public access, because anyone who meets the requirements —who submits the documentation and carries out the relevant procedures— can consult it. This file is managed (centrally) by the General Registry of Last Will and Testament Acts of the General Directorate of Registries and Notaries. An entity is dependent on the Ministry of Justice.

But if we are more precise, we should refer to this file as a record of death coverage insurance contracts. And it is that it not only collects information related to contracted life insurance. Accident insurance is also included. In short, and as its name suggests, it contains information about the insurance that covers the death contracted by someone.

Registry of life and deceased insurance: what information does it collect

It is necessary to stop at this point since this way of referring to the registry can lead to misunderstandings. And it is that, as we said, not only life insurance taken out by a person who has died (and which is still in force) is included. Accident insurance shares coverage with life insurance: death.

Life insurances

It is a guarantee also common to life-risk insurance and mixed life insurance (named precisely because they combine savings with death coverage). Although it is proposed with different formulas, the purpose of life insurance that includes death coverage —which is reported by the life insurance registry— is the same.

It is about anticipating the lack of income that the death of a relative may entail. How? Guaranteeing a sum of money to some beneficiaries that they will collect if the policyholder dies while the policy is still in force. Either the capital insured for this purpose or the capital saved thinking about retirement plus an additional capital (in the case of some life-saving insurance). But also in other cases: find out by reading our guide on what life insurance covers.

accident insurance

They can be individual or collective (for companies) and include more coverage. From temporary disability to permanent and absolute disability, through the daily subsidy for hospitalization.

Focusing on the main one, the approach is similar to that of life insurance: guaranteeing capital to some beneficiaries, in the event of death. But different, because it refers to accidental death (also caused by a traffic accident, according to the company). In life insurance, accidental death is a guarantee that must be contracted separately.

Life insurance registry: who consults it

Anyone who needs it can consult this file and obtain the life insurance registration certificate. This is stated on its website by the Ministry of Justice: “Any person interested in obtaining information may request the certificate, provided that they present the required documents, or in the case of the electronic application, the necessary death data is available electronically”.

The objective is to obtain information on both the subscribed insurance (if any) and the entity with which they have been contracted, in order to be able to claim the insured capital, as beneficiary. This information is collected in a document: the life insurance registration certificate or death coverage insurance certificate.

The beneficiaries, the most interested in the certificate of the life insurance registry

But, who may be interested in knowing this information? Logically, whoever believes that they may be the beneficiary of possible life insurance. The closest relatives of the deceased ( the legal heirs, if there is no designated beneficiary outside the family) are the ones who usually carry out this procedure.

Because it is the only way to know (if the deceased did not mention it, not even in his will) if a person is a beneficiary of life insurance and thus be able to claim against the company. There is a term of five years for this, set by the Insurance Contract Law. And it coincides with the period in which the information will be available in the life registry.

It should be noted that the legal heirs are, by order, children, parents, and spouses. If the insured had not designated anyone in particular, they are the ones who will have the right to claim the capital of the life insurance.

Life insurance registration: how to make an inquiry

To fully understand the function of the life insurance registry and so you know what to do if you need to use it, you need to be clear about some key aspects, such as the deadlines, paperwork, and more to obtain a certificate of the life insurance registry. We summarize them in this section.

Life insurance registration deadlines

Given that the purpose of making a query to the life insurance registry is to know if a person who has died had any insurance with death coverage, it is the date of death that sets the deadlines.

If you want to obtain the death coverage insurance certificate, you will have to wait 15 days from the date of death to be able to apply. And you can do it until five years after the person died.

Documentation to request registration of life insurance

Unless the death was registered in a justice of the peace, in 2009 the death certificate is no longer necessary to request the death coverage insurance certificate from the life insurance registry. But you will need :