At a glance
- NerdWallet ranking: No. 3 life insurance company.
- Customer satisfaction scores are about average.
- Offers a full menu of term and permanent life insurance.
Overview
Guardian Life Insurance Co. is a mutual insurance company, meaning it’s owned by its policyholders. Customers who buy certain products, such as whole life insurance, can share in annual dividends. The company has paid a dividend every year since 1868, and in 2018 will pay a record dividend of $911 million to its policyholders.
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Learn more about each element included in our Guardian Life review by clicking below.
More about Guardian Life
| Types of life insurance sold | Other products and services |
|---|---|
Guardian Life Insurance coverage options
The company added new features in recent years to its term and whole life insurance products. They include:
- An “Index Participation Feature,” which lets whole life policyholders link a portion of their cash value growth to the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.
- A “Lifetime Protection Builder,” designed for people who want to convert term life to whole life insurance in intervals. Policies with this feature provide 15 years of temporary insurance coverage, which is reduced on the fifth, 10th and 15th anniversaries. Policyholders have opportunities at each of those intervals to purchase whole life coverage.
- Greater flexibility for policyholders who want to borrow against the cash value in their whole life insurance policies. They can choose between fixed or variable loan interest rates when they take out loans on the policies’ 10th anniversaries.
In 2017 the company introduced a whole life survivorship policy called Guardian EstateGuard. Survivorship life insurance insures two people, typically a married couple, on one policy. The death benefit is paid to the beneficiary after the second person dies. With the EstateGuard policy, the cash value increases after the first person dies. Another unique feature is policyholders can add more coverage in the early years of the policy.
