Primerica offers basic term insurance coverage. They also have a variety of other financial products, sold through third party businesses. Their goal is to get customers to buy term insurance and invest the rest. As such, they offer many investment products for you to choose from. They have been selling term life insurance since 1977 and pay an average of $3.8 million in benefits claims every day. The website says that 94% of claims are paid within 14 days.
- Pros/Cons of Primerica Life Insurance
- Products Offered by Primerica Life Insurance: 30/100
- Financial Strength Rating of Primerica Life Insurance: 80/100
- Customer Satisfaction Rating of Primerica Life Insurance: 40/100
- Consumer Complaints Rating of Primerica Life Insurance: 80/100
- Digital Experience Rating of Primerica Life Insurance: 40/100
Pros and Cons of Primerica Life Insurance
| Pros | Cons |
| – Excellent financial strength – Capable of quick payouts (94% of claims paid in 14 days or less) | – No permanent life insurance products offered – No online quoting – Multi-level marketing is part of their business plan – High-pressure sales tactics |
Products Offered by Primerica Life Insurance
Primerica has a slew of financial products available, but as far as life insurance goes, they only offer term life insurance. Term insurance is sold through agents.
Something to be aware of is that Primerica sells all of its products through agents, which is pretty common in the life insurance business. What isn’t as common is that Primerica’s agents try to recruit customers into becoming agents as well. The two ways to earn money if you are a Primerica agent are by selling financial products or by recruiting others to sell financial products and getting a commission from their sales.
While it’s not a scam—there are legitimate products involved—Primerica could be defined as MLM, or multi-level marketing business. This means that if you purchase insurance from a Primerica agent (who is probably either a friend of a family member) they will try to recruit you into selling insurance. Also, all of their agents are independent contractors, so they (or you) will work on commission only.
It’s also difficult to find information about their policies on Primerica’s website. They speak of “feature-rich solutions” and “industry leading renewal options” with no mention of what these terms actually mean.
Primerica also only sells their life insurance products through Primerica insurance agents— no brokers. This makes it difficult to guess what their prices are like. You’ll have to call an agent to discuss them, and then there might be some sales pressure. Their agents can only sell you Primerica products. If you’re interested in whole life, universal life, or indexed universal life, or variable universal life, or guaranteed universal life, you’re out of luck.
In 2019, the average Primerica life insurance agent made $6,249.
You can google and find a lot of information about Primerica’s business practices.
Primerica also offers other financial products, including:
- Mutual funds
- Annuities
- Retirement funds—traditional and Roth IRA’s
- Auto and home insurance
- Identity theft protection
- Legal protection program called LegalShield
LegalShield is also an MLM.
Financial Strength Rating of Primerica Life Insurance
AM Best gives Primerica an A+ rating, so they do appear to be financial stable and very capable of meeting their financial obligations.
Customer Satisfaction Rating of Primerica Life Insurance
J.D. Power evaluates life insurance companies on a 1,000 point scale, with 761 being the median average. Primerica scores a 741 out of 1,000, or average overall. Here’s how they stack up in individual categories:
- Overall satisfaction: 2/5
- Product offerings: 2/5
- Price: 3/5
- Statements: 3/5
- Interaction: 3/5
- Communication: 3/5
Overall, they are among “the rest” going by J.D. Power’s rating scale, although they do score in the average range in some categories.
Consumer Complaints Rating of Primerica Life Insurance
The NAIC gives Primerica a complaint code ratio of .28, which is less than expected for a company of their size.
The BBB gives Primerica an A+ rating. Reviews don’t affect the rating, but there are 43 customer reviews. They seem fairly evenly split, either one-star or five-star reviews. People either love them or hate them.
Some consumer complaints focus on high-pressure sales tactics.
Digital Experience Rating of Primerica Life Insurance
There really is no digital experience. They have a website. The website offers things such as:
- Financial need analysis
- A short series of articles regarding financial savvy
- What to consider when purchasing life insurance
That’s it. There is no online quoting, which is too bad because since they only sell term insurance, that seems like a missed opportunity. It would contradict their business plan, though, which to get as many people selling their insurance as possible.
If you have mutual funds, once you log in you can:
- View account balance
- View your investment allocation
- Update address and phone number
- Modify bank draft information
- Process financial transactions
- View account history
As far as filing a claim, paying your bill, or…anything, really, there doesn’t seem to be any information about that on the website. There is a place to sign in if you have life insurance through Primerica, so maybe you can do those things, but we couldn’t sign in so we couldn’t tell.
Last Thoughts
The financial philosophy of Primerica life insurance is sound—buy term insurance, invest the rest. That’s endorsed by many financial professionals and is a reasonable financial strategy. How you feel about MLM businesses will probably dictate whether or not you buy from Primerica. Also, life insurance-wise, you can only buy term insurance. It’s difficult to assess what their prices are like, because they sell only through captive agents. The website is not very forthcoming about its insurance, giving you basic information and then telling you to contact them. If you only want term insurance, it’s decent insurance and they do pay out quickly. If you want to shop around—and we would encourage you to do so—you could well find cheaper term insurance elsewhere.
