Your Carrier's Rating

An insurance carrier's rating is an important tool to use when you are evaluating your whole life insurance company. Although it is only one facet of your insurance carrier's health, it quickly lets you know just how strong the company is and whether it is having any problems. Each lifetime insurance company in America is given a letter grade by an insurance review company. Some of these review companies include Standard & Poor, A.M. Best, and Moody's and Fitch. If you are curious about your permanent life insurance company's rating, you can find it online here.

Insurance Ratings Explained

You might be asking yourself, what do the letters mean? The letters are very similar to school grades. Companies are given long-term credit ratings and short-term credit rating. The highest rates insurance companies can get are "AAA," which means they have incredibly strong security features. Many of the company's borrowers are government agencies, which are deemed very reliable. These insurance companies are recommended as a good investment. "AA" means it is still very strong, and "A" means it is simply strong. "BBB" is the next grade below "A," and it means that a company has good security features, but may be vulnerable to up and down swings in business.

Anything below a "BBB" is considered "junk bond" material. A single "B" is a weak insurance company that mainly depends on having good business conditions. A "C" indicates a very weak or extremely weak company and "R" means that it is being supervised by regulators. "NR" indicates that a company has not yet been rated, and is considered a neutral rating. A newer insurance company is likely to have an "NR" rating. Like a school grade, a company grade can also have a + or - sign after the letter.

Importance of Insurance Grades

It is important to know if your life insurance company is "healthy" or not and whether you should accept new quotes from it. Like any other type of company, life insurance companies have vulnerabilities to market swings. However, a healthy company is less vulnerable to shifts and more reliant on its own. If you choose a never ending life insurance policy with a company that has a poor rating, you may be taking a risk, such as the company going bankrupt. Each life insurance company in America has grades that are made public. You can look up these grades on this website and compare companies within minutes.

Standard & Poor Ratings

Standard & Poor is an American credit rating agency that is a Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization, a title given by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The agency gives opinions on whether or not an insurance company is able to pay underneath its policies. Standard & Poor finds information from third-party sources to evaluate companies and does not personally contact each company. The rating is not an exact science, and is not a guarantee of anything. It merely seeks to "grade" companies using available information it deems reliable.

Insurance Strength Ratings

After you find an insurance carrier's rating on this website, evaluate it against other companies to see how it stacks up. Keep in mind that insurance carrier's ratings are not the only piece of information on which you should base your decision. If your insurance carrier has an unfavorable rating, do some research to uncover the reason. However, there are other factors you need to take into account when choosing to invest in a senior insurance company. Remember that an insurance carrier's rating is not a guarantee of their health, but rather the result of a compilation of third-party information.