Mutual of Omaha scores well for renewals and customer satisfaction. The company ranked No. 4 among life insurers.
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.
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Policyholders surveyed by Insure.com ranked Mutual of Omaha well. For policy renewals, Mutual of Omaha received a 100% score. Policyholders also gave the insurer generally good scores for customer satisfaction and its policy offerings.
Mutual of Omaha received 3.5 stars out of 5 and was ranked fourth on Insure.com Best Life Insurance Companies ranking.
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, 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.
Mutual of Omaha earned a high rating for customer satisfaction, with 87% of survey respondents saying they are satisfied or highly satisfied with Mutual of Omaha overall. That was the second highest score among the companies we ranked.
Mutual of Omaha scored 801/1,000 on the J.D. Power Individual Life Insurance study, ranking it third overall in that survey as well.
Customers want a hassle-free insurance experience. Mutual of Omaha’s 84% for ease of service is high, but not the strongest among the companies we ranked. State Farm led this category.
A wide range of policy offerings makes it easy for customers to purchase the coverage they need.The percentage of those satisfied with Mutual of Omaha’s policy offerings is 87%, which is near the top of the pack among companies we ranked and just two percentage points behind the category leader, State Farm.
Trust is important to policyholders. People want to know their insurer has their back.
Mutual of Omaha earns a 79% mark for being trustworthy – one of the highest scores in this category, which was led by State Farm.
Happy customers are loyal customers and 100% of Mutual of Omaha customers plan to stick with company – although it wasn’t alone at the top of this category.
Mutual of Omaha is a Fortune 500 company and the 18th largest life insurance company in the U.S. The company sells various types of insurance as well as Medicare Supplement Plans. Mutual of Omaha received almost $3 billion in direct premiums in 2021.
Founded as Mutual Benefit Health & Accident Association in Omaha, Nebraska, the company was first licensed to issue health and accident insurance in 1910. The company gradually grew over the next several decades, issuing hospital insurance to protect families during the Great Depression and becoming licensed in all of the 48 states (at the time) and two territories in 1939.
The company changed its name to Mutual of Omaha in the 1950s. It became even better known throughout the country when it started hosting Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom in 1963, which was on TV for 25 years and was revived for a brief time in the early 2000s.
Mutual of Omaha. “Explore Our Medicare Solutions.” Accessed December 2022.
Mutual of Omaha. “Timeline.” Accessed December 2022.
J.D. Power. “Individual Life Insurance Study.” Accessed December 2022.
Insure.com in the fall of 2022 surveyed more than 1,500 people with auto, home, life and health insurance (540 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.
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 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:
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 star ranking received less than 1 star and the highest possible ranking is 5 stars.