Midland National Life Insurance Review & Complaints: Life Insurance

Premiums
Claims
Feedback
Financial Strength

A South Dakota-based insurance company, Midland National Life Insurance has been in business for more than 100 years. They offer life insurance and annuity products across the country.

What is Midland National life insurance?

The United States insurer was born in Lead, South Dakota in 1906, and was originally known as Dakota Mutual Life Insurance Company. By 1909, the company decided to make the change to a publicly-traded company for financial reasons, and in 1915 “mutual” was dropped from the company name.

The company became Midland National Life Insurance Company in 1925 and began expansion plans to go nationwide. After a move to Watertown in the 1950s, the company finally relocated to its current headquarters in 1977. Reserve Life Insurance Company acquired Midland National Life Insurance Company in 1958, which later became part of Sammons Financial, the currently listed parent company.

Today the insurer writes insurance policies and sells annuities across the United States through independent agents.

What types of life insurance products are offered by Midland National?

Midland National writes a wide variety of insurance and annuity products to policy owners but does not provide any detailed information on those products. The website offers only a brief overview of what each type of life insurance policy is, with no specifics as to their particular products or premiums. All of the company’s securities are underwritten by Sammons Financial Network, including variable universal life coverage.

Life Insurance

Midland writes a wide array of policies for life insurance coverage including: term life insurance, whole life insurance, universal life insurance, indexed universal, permanent life insurance, and variable universal life insurance policies. The company’s website does not offer information regarding term lengths, issue ages, riders, or simplified versus fully underwritten policies.

The website does provide some prospectus and performance information for the company’s funds, but for all other information directs the policy owners to contact a local agent for complete details.

Annuities

The annuities section of the website offers very little information to the visitor. There is a basic overview of annuity types sold by the insurer.

Listed are fixed index annuities, traditional fixed annuities, and immediate annuities. Once again, website visitors are directed to fill out a form or contact an agent directly for more information.

Are Midland National rates competitive?

It is not surprising, given the lack of any information on the website, that online costs quoting is not offered on Midland National’s site. There is a form that allows web visitors to request a costs quote, which will result in contact with a local agent. The other option is to find the nearest agent and reach out directly for a costs quote. This will be necessary given the fact that it is also the only way to get product details.

Can claims be filed online?

Midland Life Insurance Co. does have claims forms available on their website for life policies death benefits, which is somewhat surprising, given the lack of online services elsewhere. Though Midland National offers the forms, they must be downloaded and filled out then submitted via fax, email, or regular mail and cannot be submitted online.

The Claims FAQ page for Midland National offers a solid explanation of the process and includes phone numbers and other contact information for the death benefit claims department. This should make the process of filing and following up on a claim with Midland National relatively easy.

Are the ratings and consumer reviews positive?

Strangely, Midland National’s Better Business Bureau (BBB) rating does not appear to be on the file for their headquarters at One Sammons Plaza in Sioux Falls, but rather for an office in Des Moines, Iowa. This file lists the Des Moines address as the headquarters, which according to the website is the office that handles their annuities, while insurance policies are out of the Sioux Falls office. The BBB gives Midland National an A+ rating on this file, with 27 complaints on file in the past three years. 11 of those complaints were closed in the past 12 months.

Midland National’s financial strength was rated by AM Best who awarded them an A+ rating, which is considered to be superior. The Fitch rating for Midland National was an A+ as well, which is the 5th of 19 possible ratings.

Midland National Life Insurance Company ran into some trouble in 2015, when the California Department of Insurance ordered the company to pay a $1.3 million penalty for using deceptive and misleading tactics in their annuity sales.

There are a total of 40 reviews of Midland National on Pissed Consumer. Many refer to issues with added fees, increases in premiums, and difficulty reaching customer service. At least one review appears to refer to another company, as it is regarding an auto insurance problem.

Overall, the complaint volume for Midland National is not high considering their size, but the issue of the deceptive practices may give some insurance customers pause, even if it appears to have been resolved.

What’s the bottom line?

Midland Life Insurance Company does not provide enough information about its insurance products, death benefits, or its insurance rates online to allow us to formulate an opinion on the value they offer or the costs for their services.

Midland National does have good scores in AM Best and Fitch rating categories, showing decent financial strength.

It is the kind of company that relies on agents to bring in business and are unlikely to be on the list of an insurance shopper looking to save on the cost of insurance or research and purchase a life insurance policy independently.