North Western Mutual Life Insurance Review Offers Low Rates and a Wide Range of Options

A large range of permanent life insurance products, as well as some of the most competitive term life insurance prices.

Whether you need term or cash value life insurance, Northwestern Mutual is a reliable insurer. Northwestern Mutual's term plans provide low rates, especially if you are older or a smoker, while the company's permanent life insurance policies offer a variety of payment alternatives. Furthermore, its CompLife product allows you to mix and match term and whole life insurance coverage to meet your financial position, as your life insurance needs may alter over time.

Northwestern Mutual, on the other hand, does not provide no-medical-exam life insurance products or a large range of term lengths. If you have serious pre-existing conditions or are searching for term coverage for a specific period of time, you should check into a different insurer.

Products From Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company

Northwestern Mutual is one of the major life insurance firms, offering a wide range of products such as term, whole, universal, and variable life insurance. It also has its own CompLife policy, which combines the advantages of term and permanent life insurance. Northwestern Mutual does not provide any plans with restricted underwriting, which means it does not have choices for customers with major pre-existing conditions or who need to get life insurance rapidly.

All of Northwestern Mutual's permanent life insurance plans accumulate cash value, and you can earn dividends as a policyholder. Furthermore, these plans provide an Additional Purchase Benefit, which allows you to enhance the face value of your policy at certain times in time. If your financial status changes and you need extra coverage, you can raise the death benefit on your policy without proving your insurability. This option, however, is only accessible after specific life events, such as turning 40 or having a kid.

Northwestern Mutual insurance provide your beneficiaries the option of receiving the death benefit in the manner of their choice if you die. Your family has the option of receiving a single payment or a series of installments, in which case Northwestern Mutual will pay interest on the profits.

Term Life Insurance From Northwestern Mutual

Northwestern Mutual has four distinct term life insurance products to choose from:

Northwestern Mutual's term life insurance premiums aren't the cheapest, but they are highly competitive when compared to other insurers. For three popular life insurance consumer characteristics, we compared the yearly cost of a Level Term 20 policy to some of the top insurers:

As you can see, Northwestern Mutual offers somewhat above-average rates to young and healthy customers. They are, nevertheless, less expensive than any other firm in our study for smokers and seniors.

Northwestern Mutual's term life insurance plans all have the opportunity to convert to permanent life insurance with assured acceptance. There will be no further underwriting, and your new premiums will be set solely by your age and the kind of coverage you choose. While not every insurer offers this benefit, it is commonly accessible with insurers that also provide permanent life insurance plans.

If you're uncertain between term and permanent life insurance, the ability to switch your coverage may be useful if you become ill later because the insurer will not take this into account. Take note of when you will be able to convert your insurance. This must be done within a set number of years of acquiring your term life insurance with Northwestern Mutual, and the number of years varies depending on the policy.

Whole Life Insurance From Northwestern Mutual

Whole life insurance plans from Northwestern Mutual provide lifelong coverage with flat rates and can be acquired until the age of 85. Although the minimum death benefit is $25,000, you should be able to obtain as much coverage as you require. The cash value component of its whole life insurance plan appreciates at a guaranteed pace over time. The cash value is the amount of money you would receive if you cancel your coverage, but it may also be used to borrow money from the insurer in the form of a policy loan.

The firm offers three types of whole life insurance plans, with the difference being the duration of coverage:

If you become critically ill, you can get your death benefit while still living under Northwestern Mutual's whole life insurance plans. Most insurers provide this provision, which might be useful if you would otherwise struggle to pay for substantial medical expenditures or replace missed income.

Because Northwestern Mutual is a mutual insurance firm, policyholders own it, and entire life insurance plans participate. This implies that if Northwestern Mutual receives more money than it spends in a given year, the business will pay a dividend to people who have permanent life insurance policies. These dividends can be cashed out, used to pay premiums, or purchased to supplement coverage. Dividends are not guaranteed and fluctuate in amount, with Northwestern Mutual's actually declining in recent years, but the corporation has continuously provided them for decades.

Complife Insurance From Northwestern Mutual

Northwestern Mutual's CompLife plan is effectively a hybrid of whole and term life insurance, with the option to divide the coverage however you see fit.

Assume you purchased a $500,000 CompLife policy to cover your mortgage and provide an inheritance to your children. If the sum equated to the size of your mortgage, you might opt to have $400,000 of the coverage be term and $100,000 be permanent. If your mortgage is lower and you want to leave a set amount of money to your family, you may get $200,000 of term coverage and $300,000 of permanent coverage.

Premiums may be guaranteed to remain flat for a length of time depending on the CompLife policy, although this is not always the case. Northwestern Mutual allows you to utilize profits to acquire paid-up whole life insurance to lower expenses and raise the policy's value over time. These are effectively tiny policies that replace the term coverage of the policy (reducing your premiums), raise the permanent death benefit, and contribute to the cash value of the policy.

CompLife is a useful Northwestern Mutual product if you require both short-term and long-term life insurance and wish to diversify your portfolio with a cash value policy. If you require both term and permanent coverage but don't want the cash value component, you should think about combining guaranteed universal coverage with term coverage. Though only available as individual policies, guaranteed universal life insurance has little to no cash value and is therefore far less expensive for permanent coverage than whole life insurance.

Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company

Northwestern Mutual's universal life insurance plans, like its whole life policies, are very standard but provide a variety of payment structures:

Choosing how to pay for your universal life insurance policy may appear to be a straightforward option, but it can have a huge impact on your financial situation. Not only does the single premium choice lose one of the most important features of a universal life insurance policy—flexible payments—but you must also determine whether this policy is a modified endowment contract. Certain cash value life insurance plans that are paid up over a shorter period of time might become modified endowment contracts, which can have negative tax effects.

For example, if you take money from the policy's cash value before the age of 59.5, you will face a 10% tax penalty. Furthermore, your withdrawals would be taxed on a "last in, first-out" basis, which means you'd pay taxes on investment gains right away.

Other than the payment structure, Northwestern Mutual's universal life insurance plans are comparable to those offered by other insurers. The cash value rises at a policy-determined pace, and the amount can be borrowed against. Premiums are adjustable; you can pay more in some years to increase the cash value and less in others to fulfill the minimums. Northwestern Mutual's universal plans, like their whole life policies, are participating, which means you can collect dividends.

Variable Universal Life Insurance From Northwestern Mutual

Northwestern Mutual provides three different types of variable universal life insurance policies:

Northwestern Mutual offers a variety of cash value investment alternatives with low-cost ratios for each of these products, however, the bulk are their own mutual funds. Furthermore, Northwestern Mutual provides the option of paying a greater premium to ensure the death benefit, which is not normal for most variable universal plans.

However, there are no guarantees on your cash value investments, and your premiums may rise over time if your cash value underperforms. These limitations are common for variable universal life insurance policies and contribute to the policy's "greater risk, higher possible return" tradeoff.

Reviews And Complaints About Northwestern Mutual

Northwestern Mutual is a good option if you want one of the greatest life insurance companies in terms of financial strength ratings and a low number of client complaints. Their A++ or Excellent, A.M. Northwestern Mutual's best rating demonstrates its capacity to pay claims.

Furthermore, Northwestern Mutual's NAIC Complaint Ratio of 0.03 shows that it has extremely few complaints in comparison to the volume of business it writes. J.D. Power's customer satisfaction rating gives the firm four out of five stars.

Northwestern Mutual does have some bad customer reviews, which are mostly centered on its agents' proclivity to recommend permanent life insurance over term coverage to customers. Permanent life insurance plans, particularly those with cash value, are only appropriate in specific circumstances, but selling them earns brokers more commissions. Before visiting with a representative from Northwestern Mutual, you should investigate the coverage you require.