North American Company Insurance Review & Complaints: Life & Retirement Insurance (2023)

North American Company focuses entirely on life and retirement products, keeping their expertise and experience steady and concentrated. With over 125 years of experience, The company has strong roots and continues to grow.

What is North American Company?

In 1886, the North American Accident Association was founded, and their first agent was appointed in 1890 after the company came under new ownership. In 1918, they became the first company to offer disability insurance to women, and from there they continued to grow and expand across the nation.

The company is a part of Sammons Financial Group, a Texas-based company whose parent company, Sammons Enterprises, is among the largest private companies in the United States. This gives them solid financial backing.

The insurer writes a variety of competitive insurance products including life insurance coverage and annuity products through a network of agents across the country. Also known as North American Life and Health Insurance Company, the company maintains headquarters in Chicago – the main address for life insurance, and in Des Moines, IA – the main address for annuities. As part of Sammons Financial Group, they also have offices in Sioux Falls, SD.

Online quoting is available for some products, although they can only be purchased through an agent who can help you plan your financial future.

What insurance products are offered?

The insurer writes both term life and permanent life insurance, as well as a wide range of annuities to provide retirement income. Although they have written other types of insurance, such as disability, in the past, they now focus entirely on these two areas and have a good selection of different product options.

Are life insurance policies available?

ADDvantage Term Life is the company’s term life insurance product, offering a choice of 10, 15, 20, or 30 years. Premiums are guaranteed, as is the death benefit. This policy can be converted to a permanent policy and has a number of available riders and endorsements.

The company also writes permanent life insurance in the form of Universal Life, which offers a lifelong guaranteed death benefit as well as a cash accumulation account that can grow over time. It offers the Custom Guarantee policy that offers a guaranteed death benefit up to the age of 120, flexibility to adjust your premium, and access to the benefit should an unexpected illness arise.

Finally, North American Company also writes Indexed Universal Life, which ties the growth of the cash accumulation account to an indexed account. There are four choices in the product line-up, including a survivorship option that covers two people under one policy. The choices are:

• Builder IUL
• Guarantee Builder IUL
• Rapid Builder IUL
• Survivorship IUL

Each of these policies has a different risk level and growth potential, and also provide death benefits.

Are annuities offered?

The insurer offers annuities that can provide retirement income on a tax-deferred basis. They offer several annuity types:

• Fixed Traditional Annuities
• Fixed Deferred Annuities
• Immediate Annuities

Are the company’s rates competitive?

A 30-year-old male non-smoker, in good health, can get a $1,000,0000 policy on a 2-year term for $39.16 a month. That’s about 20% below average and a very good rate for this policy.

A basic $100,000 10-year term policy can be purchased for the same insured for only $8.80 a month, which is very affordable.

The quoting system on the website is very simple and doesn’t ask for much in the way of information, which leads to some questions regarding the accuracy of the quote. Even with some adjustments for a more detailed quote, however, the company provides some very good prices.

Universal life insurance quotes are not available online, and can only be obtained through an agent. The website will direct customers to an agent in their area to get a quote as well as to complete the policy application for universal life insurance coverage.

How are claims processed?

Claims for life insurance policies can be filed by phone, by fax, by email, or by regular mail. Annuity claims can be filed by calling the toll-free number or via fax or email.

All claims information can be located on the website’s Contact page.

Beyond that, we were unable to find any further information on claims, including the process for submitting them and how they are handled. There is a policyholder login that may provide access to further information, but nothing is offered on the site in general.

This is not entirely unusual for a life insurance company, as claims are of a sensitive nature and handled differently from auto or home claims.

Are there consumer complaints against the company?

North American Company has a Better Business Bureau or  BBB business profile rating of A+ with the rating agency, although they are not accredited. There are a total of seven complaints against the company in the past three years, four of which were closed in the last 12 months.

Life insurance companies frequently have a low complaint volume, but this is very low. It shows an improvement over past ratings and past failure to respond to complaints, which could indicate that the company has been making an effort to improve its customer service.

There are very few reviews of the company outside of the BBB. Life insurance companies often have few reviews, but for a company as large as North American it’s surprising to find so little. This is generally a good sign, as happy customers don’t often write reviews.

What is the company’s financial strength rating?

Rating Company	Grade	Financial Outlook
AM Best	A+	Stable
Fitch	A+	Stable
S&P	A+	Stable

What’s the bottom line?

The company offers several options for term and permanent life insurance and does so at very competitive rates. They are a long-standing company with financial strength and backing, and their reputation is solid, which inspires confidence.

Since the reviews are limited, we are unable to gain a real picture of the customer experience with this company, but overall there’s nothing to raise major concern. Whether you’re in search of a term life insurance policy or some other death benefit coverage, North American Company is worth a look for anything in the market for affordable, quality life insurance products.