No one wants to think or talk about it but death is a part of life. Leaving loved ones financially secure when you’re no longer around means buying life insurance with a trusted company. A life insurance policy is not like other insurance policies. You buy a life policy and continue to pay but don’t necessarily have to think about it on a regular basis. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t vet the company for not only its financial stability but also services, especially customer service. For that reason, our team of experts have established and refined an annual survey to get genuine feedback and reviews from current life insurance policyholders and help you search for the best life insurance company.
Unlike reviews you might find elsewhere, Insure.com's Best Life Insurance Companies is the result of a survey of over 1,700 current life insurance customers – people just like you. We believe it to be the most comprehensive, assessment available and a useful guide to help you find the best life insurance company for your needs quickly and easily.
We’re not only life insurance experts who enjoy sharing our knowledge. We’re also consumers just like you. As consumers, we want to know what to expect when it comes to a company’s customer service and if the insurer has a decent website and apps. We, too, want a good price and to feel comfortable when deciding on a company to purchase an insurance policy. For this reason, we take our Best Life Insurance Company’s survey seriously so that all of us can find the insurance company that is the best fit for our needs.
Whether it’s your first-time buying life insurance or you’re looking to buy a supplemental life insurance policy, our mission is to provide you with a quick and easy way to review and determine which companies will be the best fit for you. Our reviews and rankings are unbiased and based on the earnest ratings and feedback from surveyed policyholders.
We’ve taken our many years of experience and crafted survey questions to find out what current policyholders like and dislike about their insurance company to make your life easier when evaluating insurance companies.
Buying a life insurance is like wrapping a security blanket around your loved ones. It shows that you care and don’t want a financial burden to weigh them down when you're no longer around. There are a variety of life insurance policies. Funeral and final expense policies offer smaller policies to help your loved ones. Term policies and whole life offer more robust protections. You will have to determine which is better for your needs. Term covers you for a finite number of years. Whole life insurance lasts until your death, but is more costly to purchase.
Deciding the right life insurance policy for your family and finances is the first step. If you have a life insurance policy in place, you may buy a supplemental policy as your family situation changes. The next step is finding the right life insurance company. You want the company to be financially stable. From there, the right policy depends on your situation and what you want from a life policy. That includes price, customer service or reputation. Once you find the companies that fit your needs, you can compare multiple insurers in our Best Life Insurance Companies.
We commissioned a survey of top company policyholders. Many of those surveyed had multiple types of policies. The survey collected customer ratings for 20 leading companies in the auto category and 15 leading companies in each of the home, health and life categories. Only current customers of the insurers on our lists were surveyed, and the survey was not open to the general public on the Insure.com website.
We asked policyholders about the following categories for ranking purposes:
*Life insurance policyholders were not asked about claims or renewal as the policy tends to end with a claim and policies aren’t renewed annually but set for an extended time period.
We also asked for feedback and anecdotes to help people who may be looking to purchase a policy with their current insurance provider. And we asked questions that are not rated or ranked on, such as why they first purchased from the company and how they prefer to deal with their insurer, as this may be valuable to you when deciding if the company is the right fit for your needs. To view the extra information, be sure to click on the company logo to view its individual page.
Our team of insurance and data experts ranked and identified the best life insurance companies based on what policyholders in our survey have to say about their experiences. This is an independent editorial analysis devoid of affiliations or partnerships of any kind – companies did not pay to be included. The A.M. Best financial ratings represent an assessment of an insurer's ability to meet its financial obligations to policyholders. These are separate from the editorial ranking.
Consumer’s feedback are weighted as follows:
Exception is life overall ratings that are based on:
The expert team reviews and analyzed the survey results to share with consumers because we believe it’s important to view and evaluate real-life feedback when shopping for insurance. Getting more information is always better when researching the best insurance companies, so continue on to see what our surveyed policyholders had to say.
Here are what some policyholders in our survey had to say when asked to make a comment about their experience (you can see all comments for each company by clicking on the logo in the table above):
Founded in 1851, MassMutual offers life insurance, including term life and whole life. The company also provides long-term care insurance and retirement services. Despite MassMutual being around since the 19th century, the company has changed with the times. For instance, it offers term life policies with immediate approval.
MassMutual ranked number one for customer service and second for price and website/app. It also ranked second for members who would recommend the life insurer. Ninety percent of members surveyed said they would recommend MassMutual. That ranked second only behind Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. The Springfield, MA-based company took the top spot for the west region, second in the midwest and third in the south. It's also popular with Millennials -- taking second place in the age group.
The Milwaukee-based company offers term and whole life insurance, disability insurance, wealth management and retirement planning. One aspect that sets Northwest Mutual from others is that it's owned by policyholders. That means policyholders are eligible to reap in dividends.
Northwestern Mutual enjoyed the highest level of member recommendation. Ninety-five percent said they'd recommend the insurer to others. Despite not getting the highest rating in any subcategory, Northwestern Mutual ranked in the top three in each one. The company came in third place for two age categories: Millennials and Baby Boomers. The insurer also finished second place in two regions: South and West.
Brighthouse was once part of Metlife. Brighthouse separated from the parent company in 2017. Brighthouse offers term and universal life insurance and annuities to individuals. The Charlotte-based company also provides one-year policies to help people between jobs. Meanwhile, MetLife continues to offer group life insurance.
Brighthouse ranked highest in the website/app category and came in second for customer service. Eighty-nine percent of members said they'd recommend Brighthouse. The life insurer was the top life insurer for both Generation Xers and Baby Boomers. It finished second in the Northeast and third in the Midwest.
Here is how insurance companies ranked when data were analyzed by age and region.