In March 2017, Lieff Cabraser and Montgomery Ponder filed a class action lawsuit based on allegations of fraud being committed on policy holders and beneficiaries of life insurance policies originally purchased from Booker T. Washington Insurance Company, Inc., Protective Industrial Insurance Company, and Universal Life Insurance Company in Birmingham, Alabama and Jefferson County any time prior to 2009.

The lawsuit was filed against North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company (NCM). In 2009, NCM took over more than 52,000 life insurance policies from the original companies.

A significant number of Booker T. Washington, Protective Industrial Insurance Company, and Universal Life customers had taken “policy loans” from those life insurance policies, loans managed by the original life insurance companies. When NCM took over the policies and the loans, NCM allegedly did not apply the interest rate specified in the loan documents to the policy loans and, instead, NCM allegedly applied an interest rate to all policy loans from the assumed policies that was, in some cases, higher than the agreed upon interest rate.

In addition, payments made on the policy loans were allegedly collected by NCM and not applied to the appropriate loans. Therefore, when life insurance proceeds were eventually paid following the death of an insured, NCM allegedly did not pay the full amount owed to the beneficiaries since the loan payments had not been applied to the appropriate loan balance.

If you purchased a life insurance policy from Alabama life insurance companies Booker T. Washington Insurance Company, Inc., Protective Industrial Insurance Company, or Universal Life Insurance Company in Birmingham, Alabama before 2009, and:

• if you were a policy holder or a beneficiary of a life insurance policy and believe you may have experienced financial fraud based on incorrect interest rates on a loan, and/or;
• if you believe or don’t know if you received an incorrect life insurance policy payout based on incorrect accounting of loan payments

our attorneys may be able to help. We have successfully represented consumers against businesses in civil lawsuits nationwide over deceptive and fraudulent practices for almost 50 years.