Brighthouse is No. 12 in our list of the Best Life Insurance Companies for 2025, earning 4.22 out of 5 possible stars. Customers are highly satisfied with the billing process.
Kara McGinley has over 6 years of experience writing, editing, and reporting on insurance and the insurance industry. She's been a licensed property and casualty expert in New York since 2021. Kara has been featured in several national publications, including USA TODAY, MSN, LifeHacker, Kiplinger, PropertyCasualty360, Policygenius, Rental Housing Journal, and WRAL.
Nupur Gambhir is an insurance expert and managing editor of Insure.com. She specializes in life and health insurance content, and has experience as a marketing consultant.
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Brighthouse earned the No. 12 spot on our list of the Best Life Insurance Companies in 2025, earning 4.22 out of 5 possible stars. The insurer received high marks for customer service with policyholders we surveyed, with 86% saying they were satisfied with the company. AM Best, a credit rating agency, gave Brighthouse an A grade, the third-highest score possible. While this is a good grade from AM Best, other insurers in our analysis received stronger ones.
Brighthouse was among the highest-scoring companies for the billing process, with 93% of surveyed customers reporting satisfaction.
Below is our review of the full company and its line of life insurance products. It’s based on third-party metrics and an in-depth survey of insurance customers. Find the full methodology here, including an explanation of our survey scores.
AM Best's Financial Strength Rating is an independent opinion of an insurer's financial strength and ability to meet its ongoing insurance policy and contract obligations.
An above-average percentage of customers said they were satisfied with Brighthouse. However, the insurer scored slightly below average in J.D. Power’s customer satisfaction study. The industry average is 648. State Farm came in first place in that study.
Life insurance is complicated enough, so it’s important that insurers provide easy-to-use tools. Around 86% of surveyed customers said they were satisfied with Brighthouse’s ease of service.
Brighthouse received decent marks for its policy offerings—81% of surveyed customers said they were satisfied with the options. Of the 16 companies that made our best companies analysis, Guardian led this category with a score of 97%.
Around 81% of surveyed customers said that Brighthouse is trustworthy. Several insurers received higher marks than Brighthouse. Northwestern Mutual led this category, with 100% of surveyed customers saying they trust the insurer.
Around 81% of surveyed customers said they’d renew their policy with Brighthouse. Four of the companies that made our best ranking received 100% in this category.
Note: Brighthouse is licensed to sell insurance in all 50 states. Product availability can vary by location.
In 2005, MetLife acquired Travelers Life Insurance Company and Travelers Life & Annuity Company. Travelers Insurance Co, was founded back in 1863 and it started selling life insurance in 1923 and annuities in 1938.
In 2017, Metlife spun off a large portion of its retail business to offer a suite of products under the Brighthouse Financial name. Many of these products now offered through Brighthouse trace their origins back to options developed by Travelers Insurance in the first few decades of the 20th Century. With a headquarters in Charlotte, N.C., Brighthouse now operates as an independent company and trades on NASDAQ under BHF.
Sources:
J.D. Power. “Individual Life Insurance Study.” Accessed March 2025.
Insure.com in the fall of 2024 surveyed more than 1,750 insurance consumers (973 people with life insurance). The survey was conducted by online market research company Slice MR.
Respondents were asked to name their life insurer and then grade it in the following categories:
The percentage of respondents who said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their insurer is presented in the results.
We then asked respondents to provide a yes or no response to indicate their agreement with the following statements:
The percentage of respondents who said yes is presented in the results.
The editors compiled the survey results and then selected – based on the number of survey responses – the top companies for further evaluation.
They then collected AM Best data, which measure financial strength, and National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ complaint data, which ranks a company by the number of customer complaints it receives. The Insure.com team identified the NAIC codes of each underwriting company for each carrier and calculated a weighted average complaint index, weighted by the annual written premium. The associated NAIC complaint index score was used in the calculations.They also collected insurance rate data from Compulife.
With the help of Prof. David Marlett, Ph.D., Managing Director of the Brantley Risk and Insurance Center at Appalachian State University, the editors created a rating system to determine which insurance companies were best in each sector. For life insurers, we took the following and gave each a weight.
Each insurer was awarded between half a star and 5 stars. No company in the ranking received less than half a star in any category, and 5 stars was the most any insurer could receive.