A Massachusetts company has launched its Policy Locator Service to provide a tool to help uncover whether a life insurance policy exists.

“There is no central database of in-force life insurance policies in North America,” Lee Oliphant, executive vice president of Braintree, Mass.-based MIB Solutions, said in a statement. “However, MIB’s industry-wide database can report if an insurer took a policy application for the individual and submitted a query to our fraud detection service. It’s that activity that can help point the way to the company or companies that might have issued a life insurance policy.”

MIB member companies include health plans, insurers and life reinsurers, who collectively write the majority of individually underwritten life insurance policies in the U.S., the company said.

The service, started in 2004 for surviving spouses, family members and legal representatives, has been actively marketed to estate attorneys.

“Since the service began, we’ve found application activity on roughly 30% of our inquiries — and in many cases, we found that coverage had been requested from more than one company,” Oliphant said.

MIB’s Policy Locator database currently contains more than 170 million records representing applications processed during the last 13 years. More than 10 million new records are added annually. The service also helps attorneys and consumers trace life policies to the correct insurance company in cases where the original insurance company issuing a policy has “disappeared” due to its merger into a successor or surviving company, according to the company. Policy Locator provides authorized individuals with the name and contact information of the insurance company or companies to which the decedent applied for coverage.

“The Policy Locator Service doesn’t guarantee that a policy has been issued,” Oliphant said. “But it does point people to the companies that are most likely to have issued coverage.”

To use the Policy Locator Service, a decedent’s surviving spouse, next-of-kin or legal representative must submit an application form with a certified copy of the death certificate. The cost of a search is $75 and responses usually are returned within 10 business days, company officials said.