Chris Kissell is a Denver-based writer and editor with work featured on U.S. News & World Report, MSN Money, Fox Business, Forbes, Yahoo Finance, Money Talks News and more.
Nupur Gambhir is a content editor and licensed life, health, and disability insurance expert. She has extensive experience bringing brands to life and has built award-nominated campaigns for travel and tech. Her insurance expertise has been featured in Bloomberg News, Forbes Advisor, CNET, Fortune, Slate, Real Simple, Lifehacker, The Financial Gym, and the end-of-life planning service.
Why you should trust Insure.com
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MassMutual is one of the biggest insurance providers in the U.S. and paid more than $7 billion in insurance and annuity benefits in 2022. The big mutual insurance company, which offers term and whole life, received strong ratings for being trustworthy from the MassMutual customers who responded to a recent survey by Insure.com. The company’s customers represented a relatively same percentage of respondents, but those MassMutual policyholders liked MassMutual’s policy offerings and almost all said they plan to renew their policy.
Best whole life insurance ranking: In a recent Insure.com ranking of companies offering whole life insurance, MassMutual was ranked seventh. The company received 3.47 stars out of a possible 5 stars (which we rounded to 3.5 stars in our whole life ranking). The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has recorded a low number of complaints about the company. The insurer scored well for historical performance, receiving 5 stars. It also received 4.6 stars for its account access.
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 , including an explanation of our survey scores.
Customer satisfaction rankings tell you a lot about an insurance company and how the insurer treats its customers.
MassMutual received an above-average satisfaction score of 780 from J.D. Power. The industry average, according to data the J.D. Power released in October 2022, was 774.
In our whole life insurance ranking, MassMutual received a 5-star rating for financial strength, showcasing its ability to meet its financial obligations. MassMutual also received top scores for financial strength from several third-party ranking agencies. Each rating agency below gives MassMutual a stable outlook for its financial future.
Because term life is generally the most straightforward and affordable life insurance product, Insure.com used premiums collected by CompuLife to evaluate MassMutual’s term life offerings.
MassMutual’s life insurance’s term life insurance rates are comparable to most other insurers evaluated in the Insure.com survey. Most insurers provided coverage for under $500 a year for 35-year-old non-smokers purchasing $500,000 in coverage for a 20-year-term, and MassMutual falls in that bucket with an average annual premium of $460. Of all the insurers, Farmers charged significantly more with a premium of $614.
The industry average for a term life insurance policy is $481. Compared to the annual average premium of life insurers surveyed, MassMutual is more than 4% cheaper.
In our whole life insurance ranking, with data provided by Veralytic, MassMutual received a 1.5-star rating out of 5-stars. While the insurer didn’t receive the highest score of the companies we ranked, there were still three insurers that ranked lower.
An insurer that rates well in the ease of service category makes life easy on its customers.
In a wide-ranging survey of insurance consumers conducted by Insure.com, a handful of MassMutual life insurance customers responded. Most said they would renew their policies with the company. However many other insurers did better in this category.
A wide range of policy offerings ensures policyholders find the right coverage for their needs.
Some 80% of the handful of customers who responded to our survey said they were satisfied with policy offerings at MassMutual, which would put the company near the middle of the pack among companies in the survey.
Trust is at the core of the relationship between an insurance company and its policyholders. MassMutual earns an 80% mark for being trustworthy, which is a good score, but not the best of the companies surveyed.
Happy customers tend to be loyal to their insurer. About 90% of customers plan to stick with MassMutual.
MassMutual was founded in 1851. It’s a mutual company, which means that its policyholders (rather than shareholders) share in the ownership and can receive dividends. Dividends are not guaranteed, but MassMutual has been paying them to eligible policyholders every year since 1869.
The company was the fourth largest writer of life and annuity insurance in 2022, according to the Insurance Information Institute. The company has, as of December 2022, more than $950 billion of life protection in force, according to its website.
MassMutual is headquartered in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Sources:
MassMutual. “Insurance.” Accessed June 2023.
MassMutual. “Retirement.” Accessed June 2023.
MassMutual. “Investment.” Accessed June 2023.
MassMutual. “A legacy of mutuality.” Accessed June 2023.
MassMutual. “Financial Performance and Insurance Ratings.” Accessed June 2023.
J.D. Power.” Individual Life Insurance Study”. Accessed June 2023.
Insure.com in the fall of 2022 surveyed more than 1,500 people with auto, home, life and health 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 Health 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.
Survey score calculation: Respondents were then asked to rank their insurer’s top three attributes out of more than a dozen presented – including customer satisfaction and policy offerings. For a number one choice, five points were given; for a second choice, three points; and for a third choice, a single point. The total points for each choice – first, second and third – were then divided by the number of each company’s customers who responded to that survey question to create a percentage. Those percentages are presented in the results as scores.
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, and A.M. 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:
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.