Database of unclaimed life insurance policies

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the California Public Records Act, and on behalf of the 501(c)3 non-profit organization Reclaim The Records, I hereby request a copy of the database that is available on your website, the California "Life Insurance Settlement Search". The URL is:

https://ucpi.sco.ca.gov/ucp/LifeInsuranceSearch.aspx

This part of your website allows members of the public to search for unclaimed life insurance policies for deceased people who had addresses in California. However, your website is unfortunately set up so that the public must input the exact surname (with the exactly correct spelling) in order to even browse the data. This means that the public cannot currently do a search of the database by other fields, such as a search for all people who lived in a specific town, or for all people with certain first name. It also means that the public cannot do a search for slightly misspelled surnames or common phonetic matches to surnames -- and these are the kinds of problems which may have been the reason for these policies going unclaimed in the first place.

Other types of unclaimed property on the California State Controller website do have the ability for people to download the raw files for offline searches. For example, here is the link to the downloadable files of the unclaimed California property records, which you update weekly:

https://sco.ca.gov/upd_download_property_records.html

But those are only the data sets for unclaimed *property* (real estate, bank accounts, settlement checks, etc.). I am requesting the data sets for unclaimed life insurance policies, which do not appear to be downloadable yet.

I am requesting this database be provided to the public as the raw underlying data, whether it is a MySQL data dump, a CSV text file, or some other common data export format. The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes. In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request be filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or USB thumb drive if not.

I would also ask that you please consider adding this unclaimed life insurance policy data set as a new type of download on your website, so that other people may use it too.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 10 calendar days, as the statute requires, as required by the law.

Sincerely,

Reclaim The Records
https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/

Dear Mr. Chivaro,

Thank you for your timely and helpful response!

- Brooke