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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Northwestern Mutual is No. 1 on our 2025 Best Life Insurance Companies ranking and received a 4.67 star rating out of 5. The insurer scored an A++ (Superior) from the credit rating agency AM Best, which measures the financial strength of a company. This is an important factor to consider because an insurer’s financial health indicates its likelihood and ability to make claim payments.
In addition, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) recorded a low number of consumer complaints about Northwestern Mutual. This means that relatively few customers reported complaints about Northwestern Mutual to their state insurance departments or similar agencies.
Northwestern Mutual also scored well for ease of service. All of the customers surveyed plan to renew their policies, with 94% saying they’d recommend the insurer. It’s also our highest-ranked company for trustworthiness, with a survey score of 100%.
Below is our review of the full company and its line of life insurance products. 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.
Several competitors scored better than Northwestern Mutual in our customer satisfaction survey – with Guardian leading the category in our ranking. However, in a separate customer satisfaction study by J.D. Power, Northwestern Mutual came in fourth place, with State Farm, Guardian, and MassMutual taking the top three spots.
Policyholders don’t want a hassle when dealing with their insurance company, so ease of service is key. Around 72% of customers surveyed are satisfied with Northwestern Mutual’s ease of service. Other companies, like Guardian and AIG, scored higher.
Many policyholders expect a wide range of policy offerings from their insurance company. The percentage of those satisfied with Northwestern Mutual’s policy offerings is 78%. Among insurers that made our best life insurance companies ranking, Guardian scored the highest with a rating of 97%.
Trust is essential to a good relationship between an insurer and its policyholders. Surveyed customers gave Northwestern Mutual a 100% on trustworthiness — the highest score out of all the companies we analyzed.
Customer loyalty keeps policyholders with their insurance company. In all, 100% of customers plan to stick with Northwestern Mutual.
Note: Northwestern Mutual is licensed in all 50 states. However, products and riders available can vary by location.
Ranked highly on the Fortune 500 list, Northwestern Mutual provides financial services and is a mutual company. While the company offers life insurance services, it also provides estate planning, retirement and investment products.
Northwestern Mutual has been around for more than 160 years. Today, it is headquartered in Milwaukee. The company has paid dividends every year since 1872.
The company is also known for its network of more than 6,400 financial advisors and professionals throughout the country, who help clients with insurance protection, investments, and business and estate planning.
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.