Life insurance - how to pick a carrier?

[sbornia]

I'm looking into a 30-year term policy but am having trouble picking one carrier from amongst several with similar premiums and rating scores. The brokers I've spoken with are not that helpful, and either seem like order takers or used car salesmen. I guess what I'm looking for is a better understanding of what metrics really matter (wrt financial health, customer service, claims ease, etc.) and how a few different ins. companies compare with one another.

I'd appreciate any insights from experienced buyers or intellectually honest industry folks. Thanks!

[Jonathan]

Industry folks are generally barred from dispensing advice on public web forums.

[vqdriver]

well, i was life insurance shopping not too long ago and kinda had the same situation. all criteria being the same, there was no appreciable difference in premiums and i honestly had no meaningful way of selecting the carrier. no good advice regarding picking one either. informal questioning amongst my friends landed me with an even distribution between the choices i had and each had good reasons. in the end, i narrowed it down by picking out the longest lived companies and then i google searched the remainder along with terms like "problems" or "fail" or "sucks" and "issues"........ etc.

not very scientific i know, but people with bad experiences are far more likely to post on the net than those who had no problems.

[WadePatton]

Term is term. It is carefully calculated out for the carrier to make a conservative profit. You die w/in the term, they pay. Pretty cut/dried. Very little need for customer service...just that one time, and then it's not you.

Just get it. and make sure it's enough to replace your income (and cover any debts) for your survivors, so that they can invest it conservatively and replace your earning power.

It's the whole/whatever crap insurance that promises investment/savings and cash values that is a glorified turd and should be avoided-to wit every cash-value policy has a term policy backing it up for the death benefit. The "cash value" is money you gave them and they invested and took fees out of and paid salesmen and customer-service personnel and ... well, when you die, there is no "cash value". your survivors only get the face value (the term part).

smart money buys term life, forgets about any coddling by ins agents and then invests the difference (of what he would have paid for a cash-value policy). he then has investments that don't evaporate upon his death. his estate gets the term value, plus his outside investments (or cash in a mattress).

just sayin'

[roseyscot]

i bought term in 2011 for the first time. i tried to go with metlife because they support a local cycling team and a few races. while i waited ages for them to push the paperwork through, i called ING and they instantly quoted me a significantly better rate. they even had a person come do the blood work within the same week. i told metlife about the better rate and they investigated and came back willing to underwrite the policy from the company ING was using. i went through it all with met, hoping they get some commission out of my effort but frankly it was painfully slow dealing with them and took probably 5 months for them to get the policy paperwork in place.

my advice would be to call ING, ask them to quote you the best options and you'll be done with it inside of a month. as wade said, it's term, it should be simple.

[echelon_john]

SBLI

Home | Term Life Insurance, Whole Life Insurance | SBLI