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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New York Life tied at the No. 3 spot with John Hancock in our 2025 Best Life Insurance Companies ranking. The insurer received 4.54 stars out of 5.0. In our customer survey, around 84% of respondents reported being satisfied with New York Life’s billing process and policy offerings.
The insurer also received excellent scores from third-party rating agencies. New York Life has a low rate of customer complaints to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), which compiles this data from state regulators. AM Best gave New York Life an A++ (Superior), its highest rating for financial stability.
Below is our review of the company and its entire life insurance product. 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.
New York Life scored around 79% in our customer satisfaction survey, which is about average. In J.D. Power’s customer satisfaction study, New York Life came in slightly below the study’s average of 648 — it received 639 out of 1,000 points.
Because term life is generally the most straightforward and affordable life insurance product, we used premiums collected by CompuLife to evaluate New York Life’s term life offerings.
New York Life costs $353 a year for a 20-year term policy for a 35-year-old non-smoker with a $500,000 death benefit. That’s below the industry average cost of $377 per year.
It’s important that an insurance company offers easy-to-use services when it comes to filing a claim or paying premiums. Around 79% of New York Life survey respondents said they were satisfied with the insurer’s ease of service. That’s about average in our analysis, with some top competitors beating it out.
A wide range of policy offerings makes it easier for consumers to find the coverage they need.
The percentage of those satisfied with New York Life’s policy offerings is 84%. This puts it in the top half of companies in this category.
Policyholders want an insurance company they can trust. About 90% of surveyed customers said that New York Life is trustworthy. While this is a high score, several competitors, including Northwestern Mutual and Prudential, scored higher.
Consumers who are loyal to a company offer testimony about the insurer’s performance. About 96% of New York Life customers responded to our survey that they plan to renew with the insurer.
New York Life is one of the biggest mutual life insurance companies in the U.S. The insurer also has some of the highest financial ratings when compared to its peers.
New York Life’s history stretches back to 1841, when its predecessor – the Nautilus Insurance Company – was founded. Today, New York Life is one of the oldest and largest mutual insurance companies in the United States.
Policyholders share in the ownership and have received dividends based on the company’s investment performance every year since 1854.
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.