Liberty Mutual is not one of our top-rated life insurance companies. You can review our list of the best life insurance companies for what we think are better options.
Pros Explained
- Get quotes for up to $10 million in term life coverage online: Through Liberty Mutual’s website, you can get quotes for up to $10 million in term coverage with a 30-year term.
- Simplified coverage available: Not all of the plans sold through Liberty Mutual’s website require medical exams. Depending on your desired coverage, you may qualify for simplified underwriting and skip the exam.
Cons Explained
- Online quotes not available for all insurance options: Only term life coverage is available for online quotes, and there are limits on coverage amounts and term length. If you’re interested in higher coverage amounts, longer terms, or whole life coverage, you’ll have to contact an agent.
- No guaranteed issue policies: Many companies offer guaranteed issue policies where you can’t get denied because of your health history. However, Liberty Mutual and Protective Life don’t sell guaranteed issue policies. All of their policies require medical exams or health questionnaires.
- Surrender charges may apply if you cancel your policy: If you cancel your whole life policy, you may have to pay a surrender charge.
Available Plans
Through the Liberty Mutual website or insurance agents, you can purchase term or whole life coverage. The company offers both simplified policies and policies with full underwriting.
Term Life
Term life insurance is a popular choice for families who want to protect their loved ones. It’s a form of temporary coverage that lasts for a specified term. If you pass away during the covered policy term, your beneficiaries will receive a lump sum payout of the plan’s death benefit. Once the term expires, your beneficiaries don’t receive a benefit.
- Protective Series Passport Simplified Issue: With the Series Passport Simplified Issue policy, you can get up to $250,000 in coverage without a medical exam. You can select a term of 10, 15, 20, or 30 years.
- Protective Classic Choice Term: With Classic Choice term, you can select a term of 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, or 40 years. Policies are available with death benefits of $10 million or more with full underwriting.
Whole Life
For those who want the peace of mind of permanent coverage, whole life insurance can be a good choice. Unlike term life policies, whole life plans last for your lifetime and can accumulate cash value over time.
Liberty Mutual and Protective Life have two whole life options:
- Protective Non-Participating Whole Life: With this policy, you can get a level death benefit with all premiums and benefits guaranteed.
- Protective Series Whole Life Simplified Issue: If you opt for the Protective Series Whole Life Simplified Issue policy, you can get up to $250,000 in coverage without undergoing a medical exam.
Available Riders
When shopping for life insurance through Liberty Mutual, you have the option of adding insurance riders—also known as endorsem*nts—to your policy. Riders allow you to customize your policy, access benefits early under certain circ*mstances, or get coverage for other people.
Liberty Mutual and Protective Life offer the following riders and benefits:
Accidental Death
If you add the accidental death rider to your policy and die as a result of a covered accident, your beneficiaries will receive an additional death benefit.
Children’s Term Life
By adding the children’s term rider to your policy, you can get term life insurance for your children.
Guaranteed Insurability
The guaranteed insurability rider allows you to increase the face amount of your policy in the future without undergoing additional health exams.
Customer Service
Liberty Mutual life insurance policies are sold through insurance agents. You must contact an agent to apply for coverage and set up your medical exam, if required. You can fill out the Contact Agent form to find an agent near you. Or, you can call 800-699-6459.
Liberty Mutual and Protective Life do have an online portal for policyholders. When you log in, you can make payments, change beneficiaries, or begin the claims process.
Complaint Index
The complaint index is a tool you can use to compare insurance companies. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) releases complaint ratios each year, a number that reflects how many consumer complaints a company received relative to its share of the insurance market.
The average complaint ratio is 1.0. Companies with ratios above 1.0 received more complaints than expected, while companies with ratios under 1.0 received fewer complaints.
For 2021, Liberty Mutual’s complaint ratio was 1.38, higher than the national complaint index. However, the company’s complaint ratio doesn’t include its individual life insurance business since that segment was sold to Protective Life Corporation.
Since Protective Life Corporation is now the issuer of Liberty Mutual’s individual life insurance products, we looked at its complaint ratios. In 2021, Protective Life’s complaint ratio was 0.15, better than the national complaint index.
Note
From 2019 through 2021, Protective Life Corporation has had better-than-average complaint ratios, receiving relatively few complaints considering its share of the market.
Third-Party Ratings
Liberty Mutual is not included in the 2020 J.D. Power Individual Life Insurance Study that evaluated 24 top life insurers on pricing, products, and customer service. However, Liberty Mutual’s parent company, Protective Life, was ranked 12th in the study, with a rating slightly below the industry average.
Liberty Mutual is regarded as a strong insurance company. AM Best, a credit rating agency that evaluates companies and issues its opinions on their financial strength, gave Liberty Mutual an A (Excellent) Financial Strength Rating.
Protective Life has an A+ (Superior) rating from AM Best, signaling the organization’s confidence that Protective Life can meet its policy obligations.
Cancellation Policy
As with other insurance companies, Liberty Mutual and protective Life have a 10-day free look period. You can use the free look period to review your policy documents and contracts and cancel your policy for a full refund.
However, cancellation procedures once the free look period expires vary based on your policy type. Term life policies can be canceled at any time, but you won’t get a refund of the premiums you paid. With whole life coverage, there may be a surrender charge.
To cancel your policy, contact your insurance agent.
Price
While you can get a quote online, Protective Life only allows you to get quotes for Protective Series Passport Term Life. For all other policies, you must contact an agent.
Below are quotes for individuals in excellent health for $500,000 in term coverage.
| 25-Year-Old Woman | 25-Year-Old Man | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 Years | $16.65 | $20.70 |
| 15 Years | $18.00 | $22.50 |
| 20 Years | $20.70 | $25.20 |
| 30 Years | $27.45 | $33.30 |
As with other companies, Liberty Mutual and Protective Life require you to select “male” or “female” when getting quotes or submitting an application. If you identify as nonbinary, you are still eligible for life insurance, but you should be aware that companies have not yet updated their procedures to reflect a current understanding of gender issues.
Competition
Liberty Mutual’s term and whole life policies offer high coverage amounts and simplified issue options, but how does the company stack up to Mutual of Omaha, a top-rated insurance company?
With Mutual of Omaha, you can purchase insurance over the phone or through an agent. However, you can also purchase some policies online, making it quicker and more convenient than Liberty Mutual. Mutual of Omaha also offers guaranteed issue whole life policies, so eligible consumers can get up to $25,000 of coverage without answering health questions or going through a medical exam.
Mutual of Omaha is widely regarded as a top life insurance company. In the J.D. Power 2020 U.S. Life Insurance Study, the company was ranked fifth out of 23 insurance companies.
| Liberty Mutual/Protective Life | Mutual of Omaha | |
|---|---|---|
| Market Share | Not applicable | 18th in the U.S., 1.53% |
| Number of Plans | 4 | 11 |
| Dividends for 2020 | Not applicable | Not applicable |
| Wellness Program Discounts/Quit Smoking Incentives | Not applicable | Not applicable |
| Service Method | Agent | Online, phone, agent |
| AM Best Rating | A (Excellent) | A+ (Superior) |
| Price Rank | About Average | About Average |
| Complaints Trend | 0.15 (Protective Life) | 0.65 |
Final Verdict
While Liberty Mutual is a well-known insurance company, it no longer sells individual life insurance itself. Instead, it sold that portion of its business to Protective Life Corporation; all life insurance policies are issued by Protective Life.
The company offers simplified and fully underwritten term and whole life policies with high coverage amounts. However, you need to work with an agent to get quotes and apply. And, guaranteed issue policies aren’t available.
If you’re looking to purchase insurance on your own online or want to get coverage without answering questions about your health, you’ll have to go through another company.
Methodology
We designed a comprehensive ranking methodology based on consumer priorities and life insurance company fundamentals to rank more than 90 insurers across five general categories: financial stability, customer satisfaction, product and feature variety, the overall buying experience, and cost.
In order to do this, we collected over 5,000 data points and scored each company based on 55 metrics. We grouped metrics by category to see how insurers performed in each; we then weighted category scores to determine how companies performed overall.
To learn more, read our fullLife Insurance Methodology.
