Pros Explained

• No-medical-exam term life insurance up to $1.5 million: Bestow uses accelerated underwriting to issue term life insurance policies, so medical exams are never required, even if you have preexisting conditions. 
• Get a quote, apply, and buy coverage online: Many life insurance companies require you to work with an agent at some point during the purchase process. But because Bestow is completely digital, you can get a quote, submit an application, and buy coverage online.
• Instant approvals: If you're approved for a term life policy, you can purchase coverage instantly. There’s no lengthy waiting period, as there often is with traditional life insurance companies.
• Offers live chat: Few life insurance companies offer an online chat tool, but Bestow makes online chat available to support its 100% online buying experience.

Cons Explained

• Only offers one policy: Most life insurance carriers offer a few different types of life insurance, but Bestow only sells term life insurance. 
• No riders available: If you want to be able to customize your life insurance policy with riders, Bestow isn’t the best pick. The company does not offer any optional riders or built-in riders, like accelerated death benefits.
• Low coverage limits: Compared to some other providers, Bestow’s term life insurance coverage limits are low. The maximum amount of coverage available is $1.5 million, and there’s no way to increase the amount of coverage you can get.

Complaint Index

Bestow has few complaints for a company of its size, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). Complaints frequently mention delayed claims, unfair claim settlements, policy cancellations, and misrepresentation. 

The NAIC calculates a complaint index that indicates how many complaints a company received relative to its size. If the NAIC Complaint Index is 1.00, the company received an expected number of complaints for its size. If it’s less than 1.00, it received fewer complaints than expected. Bestow’s three-year average complaint index is nearly zero, which means it has fewer than expected complaints. Most of the top life insurance companies we reviewed have complaint indexes under 1.00.

Third-Party Ratings

The North American Company for Life and Health Insurance, the carrier that underwrites Bestow’s life insurance policies, has an A+ (Superior) rating from AM Best for financial strength. AM Best is a credit rating agency that assigns letter grades to companies based on their balance sheet, financial performance, debt, and other measures of financial stability.

The A+ letter grade is the second-highest score possible from AM Best (A++ is the highest). This rating indicates that the North American Company for Life and Health Insurance, and therefore Bestow, has superior financial strength and is able to meet policyholder obligations and pay claims.

Policies Available 

Bestow only sells term life insurance, which provides coverage for a certain number of years. Unlike permanent life insurance policies, term life insurance usually does not have a cash value and premiums are lower than those for permanent policies. 

Term Life Insurance

Bestow’s term life insurance policies offer coverage for 10-, 15-, 20-, 25-, or 30-year periods. Anyone between the ages of 18 and 60 is eligible to apply, and you can choose a death benefit between $50,000 and $1.5 million. Plus, Bestow policies don’t require a medical exam, and approval is “instant,” according to the company. However, Bestow’s term life insurance policies are not renewable at the end of the term nor can they be converted to permanent coverage, unlike term policies available from other insurers. When the term ends, your coverage terminates. 

Available Riders

Unfortunately, Bestow does not offer any life insurance riders with which to customize your coverage. Some of the most common life insurance riders are waiver of premium riders, guaranteed insurability riders, and accelerated death benefit riders, like terminal illness and chronic illness riders.

Customer Service

If you need to get in touch with Bestow, you have a few options. You can call the company at (833) 300-0603 or send an email to team@bestow.com. However, the quickest way to get customer support is to use the live chat feature. Just click the live chat button on the page and you can get connected to a live representative instantly.

Our Methodology: How We Review Life Insurance Carriers

We designed a comprehensive ranking methodology based on consumer priorities and life insurance company fundamentals to rank more than 90 insurers across five general categories: financial stability, customer satisfaction, product and feature variety, the overall buying experience, and cost. In order to do this, we collected over 5,000 data points and scored each company based on 55 metrics. We grouped metrics by category to see how insurers performed in each; we then weighted category scores to determine how companies performed overall.

To learn more, read our full Life Insurance Methodology.