State Farm life insurance review and ratings 2024

State Farm ranks third in Insure.com’s Best Life Insurance Companies rankings, with customers giving it high marks in customer satisfaction, policy renewal and other areas.

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Our take

State Farm ranks third in Insure.com’s Best Life Insurance Companies list with a 4.51 out of a 5-star rating, earning high marks in multiple categories. Consider a State Farm policy if customer satisfaction is your top priority. 

In fact, every State Farm customer surveyed plans to keep their coverage with the company. 

State Farm received an A++ rating from AM Best for its credit rating, a measurement of financial strength, and a J.D. Power score of 843 (out of 1,000) for customer service. This was the best score of the insurers ranked. 

Best whole life insurance ranking: In a separate Insure.com ranking of companies that looked just at companies selling whole life insurance, State Farm came in second. The company received 3.89 stars out of a possible 5 stars.

Below is Insure.com’s review of the company and its full 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.

State Farm
State Farm Ratings
Overall Rating: 4.5
Ease of service: 4.0
NAIC: 0.33
Customer Satisfaction: 4.1
AM Best Rating: A++

Pros and Cons

Pros:
  • 100% of its customers in our survey said they would renew their policies
  • Had the second-highest trust scores
  • Had the best J.D. Power overall customer satisfaction score of any life insurance company
Cons:
  • Didn’t score well for ease of service

How State Farm scores for customer satisfaction

State Farm scores well for customer satisfaction. More than three-quarters of the State Farm customers Insure.com recently surveyed give it high marks in this area. Pacific Life topped this category, with 86% of its customers saying they were satisfied with the company and its services. However, State Farm came ahead of most competitors, including Mutual of Omaha and Prudential. In a separate study, the company had the highest J.D. Power overall satisfaction score of the more than two dozen life insurance companies it rated.

CompanyPercent of customers that are satisfiedJ.D. Power overall satisfaction score (out of 1,000)
State Farm78%843
Mutual of Omaha66%805
Prudential77%779
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How State Farm scores for ease of service

Ease of service is a metric that rates how easy it is for customers to access policy documents and make changes. More than 70% of State Farm’s customers gave it high marks in the category, which put the company in the middle of the pack in a category that Pacific Life led.

CompanyPercent of customers satisfied with the company’s ease of service
State Farm72%
Pacific Life86%
Penn Mutual84%

How State Farm scores on policy offerings

State Farm is one of the most highly ranked companies for breadth of policy offerings, only falling behind Penn Mutual and Allstate. It tied with John Hancock at No. 3 in this category.

CompanyPercent of customers satisfied with the company’s policy offerings
State Farm83%
Allstate85%
Penn Mutual84%

How trustworthy is State Farm?

A majority of State Farm customers surveyed by Insure.com said they trust the company. State Farm had the second highest score in this category among the companies we ranked, falling behind Penn Mutual.

CompanyPercent of customers who say they trust the company
State Farm83%
Penn Mutual84%
Northwestern Mutual71%

Do State Farm customers plan to renew?

Every State Farm customer surveyed said they plan to renew their life insurance coverage with the company. State Farm tied with Lincoln Financial, Northwestern Mutual and Gerber Life in this category.

CompanyPercent of customers who plan to renew with the company
State Farm100%
Allstate98%
John Hancock97%

State Farm life product details

  • Term life
  • Permanent life
  • Whole life
  • Universal life
  • Variable universal life

Other services offered

  • Health insurance
  • Disability
  • Small business insurance
  • Liability
  • Identity restoration
  • Pet medical insurance
  • Medicare supplement
  • Supplemental insurance
  • Boat insurance
  • Motorcycle insurance
  • Auto insurance
  • Home and property insurance
  • Motorhome insurance
  • Off-road vehicle insurance
  • Pet insurance

States where State Farm offers coverage

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Table
States where State Farm offers coverage
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
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
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

State Farm

Founded in Illinois a century ago, State Farm started with a focus on good service and great value. The original mission was to treat its customers fairly. Since 1922, that mission still seems to hold true, and even has a presence in its business tagline: Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

With 100 years of experience, State Farm has become a leader in life insurance as well as home and auto insurance.

Resources & Methodology

Sources:

J.D. Power. “Individual Life Insurance Study.” 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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Nupur Gambhir
Managing Editor

 
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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.

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