John Hancock life insurance review and ratings 2024

John Hancock is No. 7 in Insure.com’s 2024 Best Life Insurance Companies ranking, receiving 4.37 out of 5 stars.

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Our take

John Hancock is No. 7 in the 2024 Insure.com Best Insurance Companies ranking for life insurance, receiving 4.37 stars out of 5.

The insurer performed particularly well for policy offerings and customer renewal while also having a low National Association of Insurance Commissioners complaint ratio of 0.31. It also received an AM Best score of A+, which measures the insurer’s ability to pay out claims and meet its financial obligations. 

Below is Insure.com’s review of the company. It’s based on third-party metrics and an in-depth survey of insurance customers. Find the full methodology here.

John Hancock
John Hancock Ratings
Overall Rating: 4.4
Ease of service: 4.0
NAIC: 0.31
Customer Satisfaction: 4.0
AM Best Rating: A+

Pros and Cons

Pros:
  • Customers are happy with the insurer’s policy offerings
  • Most customers say they’ll renew
  • Low complaint ratio
Cons:
  • Premiums are higher than the industry average

How John Hancock scores on customer satisfaction

While 72% of John Hancock customers say they’re satisfied with the insurer, some carriers scored better. Pacific Life led the pack in this category. 

Insurance companyPercent of customers that are satisfiedJ.D. Power overall satisfaction score (out of 1,000)
John Hancock72%782
Pacific Life86%799
Lincoln Financial81%788
life-insurance

QuickTake

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How much does John Hancock cost? 

Cost is an important factor for customers. An unaffordable policy becomes difficult to maintain. 

John Hancock’s average annual premium is $415 for a $500,000 20-year term life policy based on a 35-year-old non-smoker at a preferred health rating. This is almost 16% higher than the industry average of $358. Pacific Life had the lowest premiums of the ranked insurers while Farmers had the highest rate.

Insurance companyAverage annual premium
John Hancock$415
Pacific Life$280
Farmers$508

How John Hancock scores on ease of service

Customers need to easily access their policy documents and get service when it’s needed.

With 76% of customers saying they’re satisfied with the ease of service at John Hancock, the insurer ranked in the upper-middle portion of the ranking. Pacific Life and Penn Mutual received the highest scores in this category, with Pacific Life in the top spot.

Insurance companyPercent of customers who are satisfied with ease of service
John Hancock76%
Pacific Life86%
Penn Mutual84%

How John Hancock scores on policy offerings

John Hancock performed very well in this category, with 83% of customers saying they were satisfied with policy offerings. Only two other carriers scored better, with Allstate coming out on top.

Insurance companyPercent of customers who are satisfied with the company’s policy offerings
John Hancock83%
Allstate85%
Penn Mutual84%

How trustworthy is John Hancock?

When asked if they trust John Hancock, 76% of customers said they found the insurer trustworthy, a score in the upper half of the rankings. Penn Mutual had the highest score at 84%.

Insurance companyPercent of customers who find the company trustworthy
John Hancock76%
Penn Mutual84%
State Farm83%

Do John Hancock customers plan to renew? 

Satisfied customers keep their policies, and 97% of John Hancock’s customers plan to do so. Most of the carriers ranked performed well in this category, with a few scoring 100%.

Insurance companyPercent of customers who plan to renew
John Hancock97%
State Farm100%
Allstate98%

John Hancock product details

  • Term life insurance
  • Universal life insurance
  • Indexed universal life insurance
  • Variable universal life insurance

Other services offered

  • Investments & retirement plans
  • College savings plans
  • Travel insurance
  • Annuities

States where John Hancock offers coverage

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Table
States where John Hancock 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
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
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Company background

John Hancock

John Hancock was founded in 1862, named after the founding father and patriot. The company, based in Boston, Massachusetts, has served customers nationwide for 160 years. In 2004, John Hancock merged with ManuLife, creating North America’s second-largest life insurance company at the time.

Resources & Methodology

Sources:

ManuLife Financial. “News release.” Accessed January 2024.

Methodology

Insure.com in the fall of 2023 surveyed more than 1,750 people with auto, home, life and health insurance (1003 with life insurance). The survey was conducted by online market research company Slice MR. Respondents were asked to name their insurer and the editors then selected – based on the number of responses – the top companies for this year’s Best Life Insurance Companies ranking. Insure.com needed 20 or more of a company’s customers to respond to the survey for that insurer to be included in the ranking, although in some categories the editors did consider companies with 18 or 19 responses.

Respondents were first asked to grade their insurer in the following categories – customer satisfaction, claims satisfaction and policy offerings. The percentage of respondents who said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their insurer is presented in the results.

In addition, the editors also created star rankings for each company. Respondents were asked to pick their insurer’s top three attributes out of the more than the dozen presented – again including categories such as customer satisfaction and policy offerings. The number of responses for each of those attributes was totaled and then divided by the number of each company’s customers who responded to that survey question to create the star ranking.

Respondents were then asked if they would recommend their insurer to someone else. The percentage who said yes is presented in the results.

They also were given the statement “I trust my insurance company” and asked if they strongly agreed, agreed, disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement. The percentage of those who said they agreed or strongly agreed is presented in the results.

The editors compiled the survey results and then collected National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ complaint data, which ranks a company by the number of customer complaints it receives. The editors identified the NAIC company code or codes that were the primary underwriting companies for each carrier and line of business using total annual premiums. The associated NAIC complaint index score was used in our calculations. If more than one underwriting company was identified for a line, we used a weighted average of the NAIC complaint index scores.

The team also gathered AM Best data, which measures financial strength.

They also collected insurance rate data from Quadrant Information Services (for auto and home insurance), Compulife (for life insurance) and the public health marketplace (for health insurance).

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 used the following weights to calculate the overall score for each company:

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

To find the industry average annual premium, insure.com weighed the rates from 9 companies: AAA, Farmers, Guardian Life, John Hancock, Lincoln Financial, MassMutual, New York Life, Northwestern Mutual and Transamerica. Rates are based on premiums for 35-year-old males and females who are non-smokers and in good health. Rates are for a 20-year-term policy that provides $500,000 in coverage.

No insurer in our ranking received less than half a star and the highest possible ranking is 5 stars.

On company review pages, the editors compared the profiled insurers in various categories against the leaders in that category or against other top insurers that match up well against the profiled company in terms of size and/or coverage area.

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