Employees must take action or lose life insurance beneficiary records

An upcoming computer system change will require all faculty and staff to take action on their Purdue life insurance.

Life insurance beneficiary information is now kept in the files of Minnesota Life Insurance Co., Purdue's life insurance carrier. However, effective Oct. 29, EBenefits, Purdue's online benefits system, will become the official record of Purdue life insurance beneficiaries.

Storing the beneficiary information within EBenefits, where other benefit information is kept, will make updating it easier to remember and more convenient. For example, when an employee is in EBenefits to add a new spouse or a baby to medical insurance, the employee can make related beneficiary changes at the same time through a simple additional step.

All employees will need to record their life insurance beneficiaries in EBenefits between Oct. 29 and Dec. 31. "The easiest time to do this will be during this year's benefits open enrollment, when employees will be in EBenefits anyway," says Susan M. Davis, benefits manager in Human Resources. 

Davis says that automatically transferring the beneficiary information from Minnesota Life to EBenefits was considered carefully but that the risk of the information transferring incorrectly was too great. "For something like this," Davis says, "accurate and up-to-date information is critical."

Benefits-eligible employees will receive a letter in their home mail during the week of Oct. 15. The letter will provide greater detail about the change and will list the employee's current beneficiaries.

"Although employees will receive a list of beneficiaries, it's important for everyone to understand that these beneficiaries will no longer be valid after Dec. 31, unless the employee records them in EBenefits," Davis says. Employees may specify the beneficiaries of their choice, regardless of who is now on record.