Prudential Life insurance offers customers to “get a piece of the Rock.” They are ranked 1st in the Life and Health Insurance category on Fortune’s list of the most admired companies for 2020. They are the largest life insurer in the United States, with over $4 trillion dollars of gross life insurance worldwide. They’ve been at this for 140 years, making them both one of the largest and the oldest life insurance and financial companies.
Prudential used to be a mutual company, but they aren’t any longer, so they no longer offer dividends to their customers.
They are available in all fifty states.
- Pros and Cons of Prudential Life Insurance
- Products Offered by Prudential Life Insurance: 70/100
- Financial Strength Rating of Prudential Life Insurance: 100/100
- Customer Satisfaction Rating of Prudential Life Insurance: 60/100
- Consumer Complaints Rating of Prudential Life Insurance: 60/100
- Digital Experience Rating of Prudential Life Insurance: 70/100
Pros and Cons of Prudential Life Insurance
| Pros | Cons |
| – A wide variety of insurance products offered, with many customizable riders – May offer competitive rates for those with certain medical conditions – Agents can offer a personalized experience – High coverage limits (up to $75 million) | – No whole life insurance offered – Healthy applicants may find better rates elsewhere – Customer reviews are averageNo online quoting (except for Simply Term insurance) – Customer service may vary depending on how good your agent is – No longer offers dividends (they stopped acting as a mutual company December 15, 2000) |
Products Offered by Prudential Life Insurance
As far as life insurance goes, Prudential offers:
- Term life
- Universal Life
- Indexed Universal Life
- Variable Universal Life
They further break it down for you, offering four types of term life insurance:
- Term Essential: Cost-effective, basic term life insurance available in terms of 10, 15, 20 or 30 years. Premiums stay the same for the length of the term. You can attach riders to the policy as well, such as accidental death, child riders, or waiver-of-premium if you become disabled.
- Term Elite: Similar to Term Essential with a few extra benefits. If you choose to convert term elite to a permanent policy within the first five years, you get a one-year premium credit.
- Simply Term: This product is sold online and is available up to $500,000 in coverage. Coverage may begin in just a few days. Terms can be 10, 20, or 30 years.
- PruTerm One: Coverage is available one year at a time. After that, you can renew the policy.
They also offer a variety of universal life, which are permanent life insurance policies. They have variable, indexed and survivorship policies. All of them may come with a variety of riders (varies by state), such as:
- Living Needs benefit (for long-term care)
- Benefit Access rider (makes the death benefit accessible while you’re still alive). Learn more about Life Insurance with Living Benefits
- Enhanced disability benefit (keeps your life insurance policy intact)
- Children level term rider (provides life insurance for young children). Learn more about Life Insurance for Children
- Accidental death (pays an additional death benefit in the event of a fatal accident). Learn more about Accidental Death Life Insurance
- Overloan protection (prevents your policy from lapsing if you have an outstanding loan)
- Enhanced cash value rider (if you need to surrender the policy in the early years, this offers higher cash surrender values). Learn more about Cash Value Life Insurance
- Guaranteed policy split rider (for survivorship policies, you can split the policy into two if you get divorced)
- Estate protection rider (enhances the death benefit by up to 100% if both people on the policy die before the 4th anniversary of the policy)
Interestingly, Prudential does not offer any whole life policies. You can explore our guide to the best whole life insurance companies if you are interested in getting a whole life insurance policy.
In addition to life insurance, Prudential Life also offers:
- Health insurance
- Annuities
- Retirement accounts, including IRA’s, Rollover IRA’s and Roth IRA’s
- College savings plans (529’s)
Financial Strength Rating of Prudential Life Insurance
A.M. Best rates companies on their credit worthiness, or the ability to meet their ongoing insurance claims. Prudential scores an A+ (Superior).
Customer Satisfaction Rating of Prudential Life Insurance
Life insurance companies are rated every year by J.D. Power. Overall, Prudential ranked 11th. Their overall score was 754, out of a possible 1,000 points. The median average score was 761, so Prudential was very close to average.
J.D. Power also ranks insurance companies on six criteria. Here’s how Prudential did:
- Product Offerings: 3/5
- Price: 3/5
- Statements: 3/5
- Interaction: 3/5
- Communication: 3/5
- Application and Orientation: 3/5
Solidly average across the board. While customers didn’t seem disappointed in Prudential, they didn’t seem blown away by them, either.
Consumer Complaints Rating of Prudential Life Insurance
NAIC calculates a ratio of complaints for each insurance company. The median average is 1.0, meaning a company has as many complaints as you would expect for a company of their size. For Group Life insurance, Prudential earned a ratio of .27, meaning they had far fewer complaints than expected.
For individual life insurance, they earned a ratio of .94, which is close to average.
Digital Experience Rating of Prudential Life Insurance
Except for Simply Term insurance, Prudential does not offer online quoting. Instead, once you fill out the form and click “submit” an insurance agent will call you. Depending on how you feel about working with insurance agents, this could be good or bad.
If you are looking for permanent life insurance policy, you should consider working with a good licensed life insurance agent. Permanent life insurance is rather complicated, you need guidance of an experienced insurance agent to get the right policy for you. An experienced agent can also help you shop for the best price.
You can file a claim online, 24/7, as well as make payments and manage your policy. There is a lot of information about all of the different life insurance policies, as well as financial advice in general on the website. There is no mobile app.
Last Thoughts
Prudential Financial and Life Insurance is a huge company, with millions of customers and trillions of dollars in life insurance holdings. This could be good for you, as if you are otherwise difficult to insure due to health issues, Prudential is able to offer better rates. They offer a large breadth of policies and they are customizable, so if you’re looking for a flexible life insurance policy that caters to your needs, Prudential can probably offer you one. If you are young and healthy, or value excellent customer service, it pays to shop around.
