Pros Explained

• Website is easy to navigate: Haven Life’s site is an industry stand-out. The design makes intuitive sense and informative pop-ups support you as you go through the quote process.
• Can apply online: You can apply for coverage through the website without having to connect with an insurance agent. 
• A++ financial strength rating: Haven Life's term policies are backed by MassMutual, our pick for the best life insurance company for financial stability. MassMutual earned an A++ rating for financial strength from AM Best—the highest it bestows—for its superior ability to pay claims and honor its insurance-related obligations.
• Online chat available: If you don’t like to wait on hold, you’ll appreciate the fact that Haven Life offers customer support via online chat, which is unusual in the life insurance business.
• Same-day decision possible: When you apply online, Haven Life lets you know within minutes if you qualify for coverage or if more information is needed. You may even be able to get immediate coverage if you qualify. Fewer than half of the companies we reviewed offer same-day decisions for term life insurance. 

Cons Explained

• Only term policies available: Haven Life currently only offers term life policies. You’ll have to look elsewhere for whole life or other permanent insurance. 
• Limited riders available: Riders allow you to customize your life insurance coverage to suit your needs. But Haven Life only offers a waiver of premium and terminal illness riders, though the terminal illness rider is available at no additional cost. The company also offers Haven Life Plus, which it refers to as a rider, but it’s actually a suite of discounts and subscription services unrelated to your life insurance policy. Haven Life Plus is only available in certain states.
• Term policies are non-convertible: Because Haven Life only offers term policies, you don’t have the option of converting your policy to a permanent policy (one that lasts your whole life). Non-convertible policies lack the flexibility to adapt your coverage as your needs change throughout life. 
• Low maximum issue age for term policies: Only applicants up to age 64 can qualify for a term policy through Haven Life; some competitors issue term policies to applicants up to age 75.

Third-Party Ratings

One of the most important qualities in a life insurance provider is its financial stability, and for that, we look to ratings issued by AM Best. AM Best gives MassMutual, the company that issues Haven Life’s policies, its top rating (A++) for financial strength. That indicates that MassMutual has a “superior” ability to meet its financial obligations, such as paying insurance death benefits.

AM Best does not have a rating for Haven Life on its own because Haven Life does not issue policies.  However, MassMutual’s stability is reassuring if you’re wondering whether industry newbie Haven Life will stand the test of time. 

Complaint Index 

Customer complaint data about Haven Life alone is also not available, but MassMutual scores very well when it comes to low complaints, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). The NAIC tracks insurance company customer complaints and compiles an index that indicates how many complaints a company has received relative to its size. A complaint index over 1.00 indicates that the carrier got more complaints than expected for a company of its size, and a ratio below 1.00 means that it had fewer complaints than expected. 

When averaged over three years, MassMutual’s complaint index is 0.05, which means it got significantly fewer customer complaints than expected for a company of its size. That’s one of the top scores of all 91 companies we reviewed.

Competition

	Haven Life Insurance	Banner Life Insurance	State Farm
Types of Coverage	Term life	Term life, universal	Term life, universal, final expense, whole life
Online Application	Yes	Yes	No
AM Best Rating	A++ (via MassMutual)	A+	A++
Price for Term Policies	Better than average	Excellent	Poor
NAIC Complaint Index (3-year average)	0.05	0.10	0.21

Policies Available 

Term Life Insurance

Term life policies offer temporary coverage that usually doesn’t surpass 30 years. A term life policy can be more affordable than a permanent life insurance policy, which lasts your whole life and builds cash value.   

• Haven Term: Coverage for Haven Life’s main term policy can go as high as $3 million. Terms of 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 years are available to applicants up to age 64. Payout can only be made as a lump sum. The policy includes Haven Life Plus, a free add-on that includes low-cost or no-cost access to estate planning and health/wellness tools. However, Haven Life Plus is not available in Florida, New York, North Dakota, South Dakota, or Washington. 
• Haven Simple: If you want to skip the medical exam, this might be the plan for you. Coverage ranges from $25,000 to $1 million and you’ll need to be between 20 and 55 years old to qualify. Simplified coverage means you only need to answer a few health questions and you won’t have to take a medical exam. The policy is issued by C.M. Life Insurance Company, a subsidiary of MassMutual.

Available Riders

Waiver of Premium 

A waiver of premium rider is an optional addition to a life insurance policy that can protect your coverage by waiving required premium payments in certain cases, such as if you lose your job or become disabled. Haven Life’s version waives premiums if you become completely disabled due to illness or injury for at least six months.

Accelerated Death Benefit: Terminal Illness Rider

Haven Life offers an accelerated death benefit rider at no additional cost as a part of Haven Term and Haven Simple policies. In the event you become terminally ill with a diagnosis of 12 to 24 months left to live, this rider makes it possible to receive part of the policy’s death benefit before you pass. The death benefit will be reduced by this amount. This is a rather generous terminal illness rider, as some other companies require that you have less than 12 months to live in order to receive the advance on the death benefit.

Customer Service

In addition to submitting a request for support through a that leads to an email response, you can choose to call or live chat with Haven Life’s customer support team Mondays through Thursdays between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time and on Fridays between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. EST. You can reach them by phone at 1-855-744-2836.

Price

Haven Life bills itself as providing affordable life insurance, and we found it does have better-than-average rates for term insurance, compared to the other companies with available data. When reviewing life insurance companies, we gathered quotes whenever available for 30-year, $250,000 term policies for healthy males and females aged 25, 40, and 55 years. 

Haven Life’s quoted rates put it in the top half of the companies we reviewed. But if you’re really looking for cheap term life insurance, check out Banner or Protective. Among our picks for best life insurance companies, they are tied for having the cheapest term coverage.

Final Verdict

If you’re strictly looking for term life insurance without many bells and whistles and you want a quick decision, Haven Life could be a good choice. Its partnership with MassMutual means policies are backed by a well-established player with a proven track record. But Haven Life brings a modern, user-friendly approach to the front end that creates a much more pleasant experience than some stuffy older companies provide. However, if you want other types of insurance, a wider array of policy riders, or the option to convert your term insurance to permanent coverage at a later date, Haven Life is out of the running. And while its term policies are better priced than average, you can still probably find cheaper coverage at one of its competitors.

Methodology

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.