Brighthouse life insurance review and ratings 2025

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.

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Our take

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.

Brighthouse
Brighthouse Ratings
Overall Rating: 4.22
Ease of service: 4.32
NAIC: 0.96
Customer Satisfaction: 4.19
AM Best Rating: A
Effective date:

Pros and Cons

Pros:
  • Strong AM Best score
  • High customer satisfaction marks for billing processes
  • Above-average customer satisfaction for policy offerings
Cons:
  • Other companies scored higher for customers willing to renew
  • Didn’t score as high for renewals as other companies on our list

How Brighthouse scores on customer satisfaction

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.

CompanyPercent of customers that are satisfiedJ.D. Power overall satisfaction score (out of 1,000)
Brighthouse86%644
State Farm71%699
Guardian93%685
life-insurance

QuickTake

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How Brighthouse scores on ease of service

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. 

CompanyPercent of respondents that are satisfied with ease of service
Brighthouse86%
Amica89%
Prudential78%

How Brighthouse scores on policy offerings

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%. 

CompanyPercent of respondents satisfied with the company’s policy offerings
Brighthouse81%
AAA85%
Northwestern Mutual78%

How trustworthy is Brighthouse?

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. 

CompanyPercent of survey respondents who find the company trustworthy
Brighthouse81%
John Hancock90%
Mutual of Omaha94%

Do Brighthouse customers plan to renew? 

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. 

CompanyPercent of survey respondents who plan to renew
Brighthouse81%
Gerber Life96%
Lincoln Financial100%

Brighthouse product details

  • Permanent life insurance
  • Term life insurance
  • Hybrid indexed universal with long-term care (LTC)
  • Indexed Universal 

Other services offered

  • Annuities
  • Hybrid life insurance with long-term care policy
  • Guaranteed Distribution Rider 

States where Brighthouse offers coverage

Graph
Table
States where Brighthouse offers coverage
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
Washington D.C.
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
AL AK AZ AR CA CO CT DC DE FL GA HI ID IL IN IA KS KY LA ME MD MA MI MN MS MO MT NE NV NH NJ NM NY NC ND OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VT VA WA WV WI WY
Available
Not available

Note: Brighthouse is licensed to sell insurance in all 50 states. Product availability can vary by location.

Company background

Brighthouse

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.

Resources and Methodology

Sources:

J.D. Power. “Individual Life Insurance Study.” Accessed March 2025.

Methodology

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: 

  • Customer satisfaction
  • Ease of service
  • Policy offerings
  • Billing process
  • Adding policy riders
  • Seniors/older adults
  • Middle-aged adults
  • Young people
  • Term life policies
  • Whole life policies
  • People with pre-existing conditions
  • People who are overweight
  • People who don’t want to take a medical exam

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:

  1. I plan to keep my coverage with my current life insurance company
  2. I would recommend my life insurance company to others
  3. I trust my life insurance company

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.

  • Survey: 60% of the total score (10% customer satisfaction, 10% ease of service, 10% policy offerings, 10% recommended, 10% policy retention and 10% trust)
  • AM Best: 25% of total score
  • NAIC: 15% of total score

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.

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Kara McGinley

 
  

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.

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