Customer satisfaction in the individual life insurance market looks stable on the surface this year, but the numbers tell a messier story.
J.D. Power’s 2025 U.S. Individual Life Insurance Study shows a 118-point gap between the top- and bottom-ranked providers on a 1,000-point scale, with 70% of carriers posting double-digit swings in satisfaction scores compared to last year.
The volatility ties back to differences in relationship management and the ways policies are purchased.
New annualized premium for individual life insurance in the U.S. reached $3.94 bn in the first quarter of 2025, marking an 8% increase compared to the same period in 2024, according to LIMRA. The total number of policies rose by 1%.
Growth primarily came from indexed and variable universal life insurance. Indexed universal life (IUL) premium rose 11% to $959 mn, with 75% of carriers reporting increases and half posting double-digit growth.
Policy count for IUL increased by 7%, representing 24% of new annualized premium.
Variable universal life (VUL) premium grew 41% year-over-year to $533 mn. Policy count increased 6%, and 70% of carriers saw double- or triple-digit growth. VUL held a 14% share of the market in the first quarter.
“Customer satisfaction is not only about the policy itself but about how people experience it,” said Craig Martin, executive director of global insurance intelligence at J.D. Power. “When the purchase and servicing run through local agents or financial advisors, gaps between expectation and reality widen”.
Direct-to-customer channels make the journey more predictable, but even there we see pain points. Insurers still have a lot of room to build trust and engagement.
Craig Martin, executive director of global insurance intelligence at J.D. Power
Direct channels are where scores climb. Customers buying directly from carriers average 696 points, 57 higher than those who purchase through an agent, broker, or advisor.
Centralized models using call centers, apps, and websites consistently outperform in digital usability, problem resolution, and value for price.
Relationships with agents and advisors tell a different story. More than half of these ties are either disengaged (43% with no contact for 3 years or more) or purely transactional (15%).
Only 19% of customers describe the relationship as trusted, which requires regular contact and adherence to service best practices.
When that higher bar is met, satisfaction surges to 795 – a huge 253-point lift over customers with weaker agent support.
Communication remains a swing factor. Customers who recall provider contact within the past year score 50 points higher than those who received nothing.
Personalized outreach tied to the relationship matters more than generic account updates or product pushes.
As for rankings, Mutual of Omaha takes the top spot this year with a score of 707, followed by State Farm at 697 and Nationwide at 695.
The J.D. Power study tracks the largest U.S. individual life insurers across eight dimensions: trust, price value, ease of doing business, people, product offerings, service access, problem resolution, and digital.
Results draw from 5,065 customer responses collected between August 2024 and July 2025.
