Pros Explained

• Unique member perks for customers: If you purchase a life insurance policy from Foresters, you automatically join its fraternal organization and get access to member benefits, like financial counseling, retail discounts, academic scholarships, legal services, and grants.
• Dividend-paying whole life insurance: Whole life insurance policies from Foresters are eligible to receive annual dividends. In 2021, the company paid $24 million in dividends to eligible whole life policyholders.
• Generous living benefits: Foresters offers a variety of no-cost life insurance riders, including living benefit riders for terminal, chronic, and critical illness; a family health benefit rider; a charity benefit provision, and a common carrier accidental death benefit rider.
• No-medical-exam life insurance available: Forester’s offers up to $1 million in no-medical-exam life insurance coverage to healthy applicants up to age 55 on most of its products.

Cons Explained

• No online quotes: Foresters does not offer online quotes for any of its life insurance products. If you want to get a price estimate, you must contact the company or an independent agent directly. 
• More complaints than expected: According to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), Foresters received more complaints than expected for a company of its size over the last three years.

Complaint Index

If you’re considering a policy from Foresters Life Insurance, it’s important to know that the company has a relatively high number of complaints. It indicates that Foresters may have problems in some aspects of its customer experience, like delayed claims, unsatisfactory claim payouts, and policy cancellations. To measure Foresters’ complaints, we looked to its NAIC Complaint Index. The index indicates how many complaints a company has received relative to its size. Companies with a score of 1.0 received an expected number of complaints, while those with an index greater than 1.0 received more complaints than expected. Companies with fewer complaints than expected have an index below 1.0.

We considered Forester’s complaints indexes over a three–year period. The average complaint score is 1.71, which means it has more complaints than expected relative to its size. For comparison, most of our top picks for life insurance have a complaint index below 1.0. 

Third-Party Ratings 

Foresters Life Insurance has an A financial strength rating from credit ratings agency AM Best. An A rating indicates it has an excellent ability to pay its insurance obligations, such as claims. Some of the factors that contribute to AM Best’s letter grades are balance sheet strength, operating performance, and total debt.

Policies Available 

Foresters offers  accelerated underwriting on most of its policies, which means you can skip the medical exam. To get a quote or purchase coverage from Foresters, you’ll need to contact an agent directly. 

Term Life Insurance

Term life insurance provides coverage over a fixed period of time. Foresters makes coverage available between 10 and 30 years. The premiums are level over the duration of the term and there is a guaranteed death benefit that gets paid out to your beneficiary if you pass away during the term. Foresters’ term life insurance policies are convertible and renewable, which means you have the option to convert your coverage to a permanent policy or continue it on an annual basis after the initial term ends. Neither option requires a medical exam. 

Whole Life Insurance

Whole life insurance is a type of permanent life insurance that provides coverage for your lifetime. It has level premiums, a guaranteed death benefit (if the premiums are paid), and a cash value component. You have the option to borrow or withdraw cash value from your policy to use for any purpose. In addition, Foresters’ participating whole life insurance policies are eligible to receive dividends, which can help your cash value grow more quickly. 

Universal Life Insurance

Universal life (UL) insurance is another form of permanent coverage that provides lifetime protection. The cash value in a UL policy grows based on current interest rates and can be withdrawn or borrowed. You can also adjust the cost of your premium within a certain range. Foresters’ UL policies include a 10-year no-lapse guarantee, which means your policy will stay in force if you pay a minimum premium each month, even if current interest rates are less than anticipated.

Available Riders

If you’re looking for a life insurance company with excellent riders, Foresters is a good provider to consider. The company offers more than 10 life insurance riders, many of which are included at no charge with your policy.

Guaranteed Insurability Rider 

The guaranteed insurability rider allows you to increase your death benefit without taking another medical exam. Foresters allows you to increase the death benefit by up to $50,000 on each option date.

Child Term Rider

A child term rider will provide a small amount of life insurance coverage for each of your eligible children. When the child becomes an adult, they have the option to convert their coverage into a permanent life insurance policy, regardless of their health.

Waiver of Premium Rider 

A waiver of premium rider will temporarily waive your monthly life insurance premium if you become totally disabled and are unable to work for a minimum of six months. 

Accidental Death Benefit Rider 

With an accidental death benefit rider, your beneficiary will receive a secondary death benefit if you pass away as the result of a qualifying accident.

Terminal Illness Rider

A terminal illness rider is a type of accelerated benefit rider (ABR) that allows you to receive a portion of the death benefit if you get diagnosed with a terminal illness. This rider is included at no cost with many of Foresters’ life insurance policies.

Chronic Illness Rider

With a chronic illness rider, another ABR, you can use money from your death benefit if you get diagnosed with a qualifying chronic illness. This rider is available at no cost on many of Foresters’ life insurance policies. 

Critical Illness Rider

A critical illness rider is a type of ABR that allows you to receive a portion of the death benefit if you are diagnosed with a critical illness, such as cancer. Like the terminal illness and chronic illness riders, the critical illness rider is built into many of Foresters’ life insurance policies.

Charity Benefit Provision Rider

Some Foresters’ life insurance policies include a charity benefit provision rider. When you pass away and your beneficiary collects the death benefit, Foresters will donate an additional 1% of your policy’s face value (up to $100,000) to an eligible charity of your choosing in your name. 

Paid-Up Additions Rider

Foresters offers a paid-up additions rider on its participating whole life insurance policies. This rider allows you to purchase paid-up additions of life insurance, which is life insurance coverage that is paid in full. Paid-up additions let you increase both the death benefit and cash value without needing to apply for more coverage and can also be purchased with dividends. 

Common Carrier Accidental Death Rider

The common carrier accidental death rider is an uncommon offering. It will provide an additional death benefit if you pass away, and your death is caused by an accident that occurs while riding as a fare-paying passenger on a train, bus, or plane. It’s automatically included on most policies.

Family Health Benefit Rider

Foresters’ family health benefit rider will provide compensation for certain health expenses, like an ambulance ride, if someone in your family gets hurt in a recognized natural disaster. This rider is automatically included on most policies.

Customer Service

You can get in touch with Foresters Life Insurance by calling (800) 828-1540 or sending an email to service@foresters.com. Foresters’ business hours are Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET. You can also access certain life insurance forms by visiting the company’s website or logging into your customer account.

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.