Lincoln Financial Group Life Insurance Review 2020

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, not all companies are accepting new life insurance applications. For the latest information on how to cope with financial stress during this emergency, see NerdWallet’s financial guide to COVID-19.

Lincoln Financial Group offers life insurance, annuities, workplace benefits and retirement plan services. The company got permission to use its brand name from President Abraham Lincoln’s son Robert Todd Lincoln in 1905. President Lincoln’s profile still serves as the company’s logo.

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Lincoln Financial life insurance

Lincoln Financial ranks No. 10 on NerdWallet’s list of the 20 best life insurance companies. NerdWallet ranks the country’s largest life insurance companies based on financial strength, customer satisfaction and consumer complaints.

Lincoln Financial offers term life insurance with a simple phone interview application. Some people who apply can qualify for coverage quickly without getting lab tests. Available terms are 10, 15, 20 or 30 years.

The company offers an array of universal, variable universal and indexed universal life insurance policies, including a survivorship variable product. Survivorship life insurance insures two people, typically a married couple, on one policy. The policy pays out when the second person dies.

Lincoln Financial’s MoneyGuard universal life policies offer long-term care benefits. The death benefit is reduced if the policy is used to pay for long-term care. If no long-term care benefits are paid, then the policy pays out the full death benefit when the insured person dies. A policyholder can also give up the policy for a partial or full return of premiums paid if no long-term care benefits have been used. Details and options vary by state.

Lincoln Financial complaints and customer satisfaction

Over three years, Lincoln Financial has drawn significantly fewer complaints to state regulators than expected for a company of its size, according to NerdWallet’s analysis of data from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

In a 2019 customer satisfaction survey by J.D. Power, Lincoln Financial scored “about average” in six categories and among “the rest,” the lowest rating, in another. The insurer ranked No. 13 overall out of 24 companies included in the survey.

Methodology: Insurer complaints

NerdWallet examined complaints received by state insurance regulators and reported to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners in 2016-2018. To assess how insurers compare to one another, the NAIC calculates a complaint index each year for each subsidiary, measuring its share of total complaints relative to its size, or share of total premiums in the industry. To evaluate a company’s complaint history, NerdWallet calculated a similar index for each insurer, weighted by market shares of each subsidiary, over the three-year period. Ratios are determined separately for auto, home and life insurance.