Gerber Life earned 4.37 out of 5 stars and placed ninth on 2025 ranking of the Best Life Insurance Companies. The insurer has a strong AM Best score and 96% of surveyed customers plan to renew their policy with the insurer.
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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Gerber Life took the No. 9 spot in our 2025 Best Life Insurance Companies ranking. We gave the insurer 4.37 stars out of 5. Most customers we surveyed are happy with Gerber Life’s billing process, with 87% saying they were satisfied with it.
Gerber Life received an A+ (Superior) score from AM Best, a third-party crediting agency. This indicates that the company is financially strong and can pay out claims. About 78% of surveyed customers are satisfied with Gerber Life’s customer service.
Insure.com’s review of the entire company and its full line of life insurance products follows. This review is based on third-party metrics and our survey of insurance customers. Find the full methodology here.
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.
With 78% of surveyed customers reporting satisfaction with Gerber Life, the company lands in the middle-to-high end of our ranking. Guardian came first in this category out of the 16 companies on our list.
The ease of service category rates how easy it is to make changes to your policy, access documents, and get help on the website or via customer service. Gerber Life scored slightly below average in this category, with 74% of surveyed customers reporting satisfaction with the insurer.
Policy offerings are important so people can customize their plans to their needs. Of the customers we surveyed, 65% said they were satisfied with its policy offerings.
About 91% of surveyed customers reported that they trust Gerber Life. Northwestern Mutual led this category, with 100% of customers saying they trusted the insurer.
Around 96% of Gerber life insurance customers plan to renew with the insurer. Most companies in our analysis did exceptionally well in this category — four insurers scored 100%.
Gerber Life has been around since 1967 and is geared toward young families on a budget. It specializes in life insurance products for adults and children and college planning tools. Unlike some of the other insurance carriers, it doesn’t offer auto and home insurance and focuses primarily on life insurance as its specialty.
It is owned by Western & Southern Financial Group, with $63 billion in active policies.
Note: Gerber products are available in every state, with the exceptions of Guaranteed Life, which is not available in Montana, and a Simplified Senior Life Disability Waiver of Premium (DWP) Rider is not available in California.
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.