Primerica Insurance Review & Complaints: Life Insurance

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Primerica is a large term life insurance company with a focus on the needs of middle-income families. They serve the term life insurance policy needs of customers in North America, including the United States and Canada, as well as in Puerto Rico and Guam. Learn more in the Primerica life insurance review below.

Who is Primerica?

The Primerica Life Insurance Company was founded as A.L. Williams and Associates in 1977 with the aim of selling term life insurance to people of middle-income (considered to be between $30,000 and $100,000 a year) and advising them to invest the difference in money they saved by not purchasing permanent life insurance and opting for cheap life insurance instead.

The company went through several mergers and acquisitions and began operating under the name Primerica Financial Services in 1991. In 2001 they went public as Primerica, Inc. The company website boasts that they are the largest independent financial services organization in the country. Primerica has more than 5 million individual life insurance policies in force.

While Primerica lists several financial products on the website, such as auto insurance and home insurance, these are underwritten by other companies in the insurance business with which Primerica partners. Primerica itself writes only term life insurance. They provide investment products and services through another arm of the company, PFS Investments. This name is clearly a nod to the company’s former name, Primerica Financial Services.

The company’s headquarters is located in Duluth, GA, and they sell products through more than 126,000 salespeople and an additional 24,000 plus financial advisors across America. These salespeople are not dedicated insurance agents in the sense that is normally expected from an insurance company. This is because Primerica works differently from other insurance companies, functioning as a multi-level marketing company that allows people who are not licensed agents to get into the insurance sales business. We discuss this further in the ratings and reviews section of this review.

What Primerica life insurance products are available?

As mentioned above, the only product Primerica actually underwrites is term life insurance. Auto and home policies are underwritten by Answer Financial, and long-term care products through either Genworth Financial or Main Street LTCI. There are also identity theft and legal services offered through a partnership with LegalShield. These insurance industry partnerships certainly increase the overall scope of this business; however, you can only purchase term life coverage from Primerica directly.

Primerica does assist clients with investment and savings products, including a mutual fund, but again this is through the financial services arm of the company.

Primerica’s only life insurance product is term life, in keeping with their view that it makes more sense for middle-income families to purchase term coverage during the years they need it most and put the rest into investments to grow and provide for retirement.

The website does not say what the issue age is for their policies nor is there information on death benefit amounts. The plans do include a terminal illness benefit and the option of an increasing benefit rider. Each term life policy is renewable and can be customized to meet each person’s needs.

Are Primerica life insurance rates competitive?

Rates are not offered on the website and the company does not offer online quoting. A Primerica insurance agent locator tool is offered to assist visitors with finding the nearest Primerica insurance agent to get more detailed information on the products as well as to obtain a rate quote.

Primerica’s focus is on affordable life insurance options for middle class families, so we would expect their rates to live up to that promise. Term insurance, in general, is more affordable than permanent insurance, but rates vary greatly based on age, health, and other factors. Primerica being a multi-level-marketing setup will also have an impact on rates, since all of the salespeople at all levels will take their commission for each life insurance sale. As far as research shows, this is the only company in the life insurance industry that operates this way.

What is the claims process like?

Primerica’s website does not offer any life insurance claim information. Through the contact page, we were able to locate a claims phone number under the general life insurance information tab. For a company with so many life policies in force, we would expect claims contact information to be far easier to locate and at least a little more detailed.

There is a login area for policyholders on the website that may contain more claims information, and as with all life insurance policies claims information should be provided with the term policy itself. Still, since life insurance claims are not made by the policyholder but by those left behind, needing to log in or have access to the original documents is not always feasible and makes the process harder for the beneficiary. It would be beneficial to see a dedicated claims page on this company’s site so it could be easier to make a benefit claim.

What do ratings and customer reviews say?

The Primerica Life Insurance Company has an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau (BBB), where they have been accredited since 1980. There are 131 complaints on file in the past three years, which is a low number for a company with more than 5 million policies in force. The 27 customer Primerica reviews on the BBB page are favorable, with an almost 4 out of 5-star rating.

There are 459 reviews on Consumer Affairs going back many years. Of those, there are 46 star ratings in the past year resulting in an approximate three-star rating overall. Reviews are mixed between customers and employees or agents, and it becomes clear upon reading the reviews that Primerica operates with a multi-level-marketing strategy, a business model that may also be referred to as a “pyramid scheme”.

What this means is that the Primerica agent and Primerica advisor selling products are looking to bring more people into the fold to sell products beneath them in the chain and that there are also several levels of people above them making money off of every sale. The more people they can get selling below them, the more they make, so they are encouraged to really push that aspect. This really is not made clear on the company website and explains why Primerica offers so little product information and not online quoting – they want you talking to a salesperson. In their mind, every life insurance purchase can be packaged as a business opportunity to the person seeking term insurance.

Of course, like any MLM setup, you do not have to become a salesperson in order to buy the products, but it is an important aspect of this company to be aware of when considering insurance through them. Multi-level marketing has a bad reputation as being a scam, but there is nothing illegal about it. It can become something of a nuisance, however, when salespeople for the company push to sign up a new Primerica representative in order to increase their commissions.

What is the bottom line?

Primerica may have some good rates and good products, and certainly, there are enough favorable reviews and happy customers to lead us to believe that is the case. That said, any company operating in an MLM format comes with its own set of concerns, and we recommend that anyone considering working with Primerica as an independent contractor get all the details on what is expected or them prior to signing up for anything. You do not need to join or do any business with a multi-level marketing organization to get life insurance coverage that suits your needs.