Transamerica Life Insurance Company wiped out our entire $58,331 investment behind our backs!
I need some advice regarding bad faith practices by Transamerica Life Insurance Company.
In 1988, we purchased a Permanent Whole Life Insurance Policy. We were promised that this policy would provide life insurance protection for my husband's entire lifetime, provided that we paid our premiums in full, which we did. Our policy has a guaranteed death benefit. The policy also has an additional rider for a “Death Benefit Safeguard Option” which ensures that the policy’s payout to beneficiaries is protected and guaranteed.
We later discovered that Transamerica reclassified our policy (behind our backs) as a Flexible Premium Universal Life Insurance Policy, which is not protected from cancellation. Transamerica then ascribed exorbitant cost-of-insurance-fees associated Universal Life Policies to the Whole Life policy that we purchased. This reclassification was their justification for taking excessive cost-of-insurance fees from our policy, completely depleting the cash value.
Transamerica eventually wiped out the entire $42,500 purchase value of our whole life policy with cost-of-insurance-fees. They then sent us threatening letters resulting in three additional payments to them totaling $15,831. Transamerica then canceled our whole life insurance policy and failed to notify us. They confiscated our entire policy investment of $58,331 + accrued interest.
Transamerica had to settle multiple class-action lawsuits for hundreds of millions of dollars for these exact same infractions. We sought legal advice, and learned that we had a valid case against them for bad faith practices, misrepresentation, breach of contract, and failure to provide notification prior to cancellation. However, our lawyer advised that Transamerica gets away with this because they can out-lawyer and outspend the average policyholder, as well as tying this up in court for years.
I have reported them to every state and federal agency, attorney generals, and Insurance Commissioners, consumer protection sites, fraud lines, etc., without success. Can anyone advise other actions that I may take to get justice? Thank you in advance!