My 93 year old father-in-law lives with us. Last week he received a letter from Royal Alliance Insurance addressed to his wife who died in 1991 advising her that she would not be getting any dividends on her policy, Not bad eh - a letter to a dead person saying she wasn't getting anything. When I telephoned them to ask what it was all about they said that when they transferred the paper policies onto the computer it generated new policy numbers which were not always cancelled when the paper policies were paid out. They apologised and said they would write to him within five days to explain. On Saturday morning he received a letter addressed to his MOTHER who died 55 years ago telling her that she will not be getting any dividends this year either. Priceless!!
I am sorry that this happened to you/your father, but I cannot say that I am surprised.
My experiences with Insurance companies are that if it is possible to make a mistake, lose a document or just be plain difficult, they will be.
Maybe people are not getting dividends this year beacause they have spent too much on postage sending out useless letters. Glad I'm not a customer of theirs.