Accordia Life Insurance is a subsidiary of Global Atlantic Financial Group. Global Atlantic acquired them in 2013. Global Atlantic was founded at Goldman Sachs, the global leading investment bank, but they separated from them and became their own independent company in 2013. This constant merging led to problems with the company, as we’ll explain below.
Accordia is headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa and is served by over 200 insurance agents. Accordia offers term, indexed, and universal insurance policies. Although Global Financial is a relative newcomer to the insurance market, they hold more than $30 billion dollars in assets.
- Pros and Cons of Accordia Life Insurance
- Products Offered by Accordia Life Insurance: 60/100
- Financial Strength Rating of Accordia Life Insurance: 90/100
- Customer Satisfaction Rating of Accordia Life Insurance: 40/100
- Consumer Complaints Rating of Accordia Life Insurance: 20/100
- Digital Experience Rating of Accordia Life Insurance: 30/100
Pros and Cons of Accordia Life Insurance
| Pros | Cons |
| – A wide range of riders available – Excellent financial strength – Some solid products – A unique rider that gives discounts for well visits | – Limited selection of products – No online quotes – Very high index ratio of complaints |
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Products Offered by Accordia Life Insurance
Accordia Life Insurance’s main focus is on their Indexed Universal Life (IUL) products. There are four different types of IUL polices:
- Global Accumulator
- Lifetime Builder Elite
- Lifetime Foundation Elite
- Survivorship IUL
These policies differ in how they calculate the cash value accumulation and whether they stress the cash value or the death benefit. Indexed Universal life insurance accumulates cash value by basing it off market performance. It allows for greater cash accumulation with less risk than directly investing in the market, and it’s also less expensive than a whole life policy.
>>MORE: Compare Whole Life Insurance with Indexed Universal Life Insurance
They also offer final expense insurance, which they call “Preneed insurance.” This particular policy links to the funeral home of your choice, so that when you die, the funeral home gets the death benefit and your funeral expenses are covered.
They also offer term insurance, with terms of 10, 20, or 30 years, or an Annual Renewable term policy (ART). Coverage amounts start at $50,000. These policies can be converted to permanent life insurance policies.
>>MORE: When is Permanent Life Insurance the Right Choice? Case Studies
They offer a number of riders you can add to a policy:
- Accelerated benefit rider – Learn more about life insurance with long term care benefit, an accelerated benefit type
- Wellness for life rider
- Return of Premium
- Terminal illness accelerated death benefit
- Accidental death benefit. Learn more about accidental death life insurance
- Children’s insurance rider. Learn more about life insurance for children
- Primary insured rider
- Additional insured rider
- Overloan protection
- Waiver of Premium
- Waiver of monthly deductions rider
The wellness for life rider is unique in that it gives you a discount on life insurance as long as you visit your doctor every other year for a wellness visit.
The Survivorship IUL policy offers the following riders:
- First to die rider
- Estate protection rider
- Survivor Insured rider
- Policy Split option rider
Although there isn’t a lot of policy options, the number of riders available do offer some flexibility for policy holders.
Financial Strength Rating of Accordia Life Insurance
A.M. Best rates companies based on their financial strength; how much they hold in assets, how much debt they have, and their ability to meet their financial obligations. Accordia gets an A (Excellent) from A.M. Best.
Customer Satisfaction Rating of Accordia Life Insurance
Accordia does not appear on J.D. Power’s life insurance study, so we will consider other sources. Accordia is not accredited by the BBB, but they earn an “A” rating. There are 54 complaints on the BBB’s website. Twenty five of them are about billing/collections, and 28 have to do with a product or a service (the last one concerns advertising).
There are also 42 mostly one-star reviews. Many customers comment that when Accordia took over Athene life insurance there were some lapses in communication.
Of note, the California Department of Insurance sued Accordia Life/Athene in 2018 for improper administration of policies (ThinkAdvisor). They’ve also been sued by policyholders, but they settled the case in 2018. Still, customers should proceed with caution.
Consumer Complaints Rating of Accordia Life Insurance
The NAIC assigns a complaint index to every insurance company. The median average is 1.0, which means a company has about as many complaints as you would expect. Accordia has an index ratio of 5.19, which means they’ve received five times the amount of complaints you would expect. We’ve never seen such a high index ratio.
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Digital Experience Rating of Accordia Life Insurance
Offering customers a seamless digital experience does not seem to be a priority for Accordia Life. For one thing, there is no online quoting, not even for term insurance. They prefer you working with one of their agents.
There is a tab on their website, “Life Insurance Resources and Forms.” You’ll need to fill out a form and mail it in (yes, by snail mail) to change your beneficiary, sign up to have your payments deducted directly from your checking account, request a loan, change your address or file a claim.
Also an interesting side note is that according to the LA Times, Accordia failed in “providing electronic access to accounts” in addition to double billing customers and letting policies lapse. It seems that when Accordia bought out Athene (which used to be Aviva) there was a lot of confusion regarding billing, day to day management, and everything else. There was a class action suit against Accordia, but they settled the case in 2019.
Last Thoughts
Accordia has a lot of complaints against it. We understand that when companies merge, there are some growing pains regarding management and bringing over old policies. But Accordia has been wrestling with this since 2016. They may have it worked out by now, or they may not. Either way, you should proceed with caution if you are interested in buying life insurance from Accordia. They seem to focus on indexed life insurance product, which is a increasingly popular products, especially to younger professional who want to invest in an IUL policy for retirement savings purposes.
