I’ve been in the insurance industry for 7 years, and have heard some good things and bad things about Monumental Life Insurance. We don’t offer their products because we are an independent agency. We prefer to keep it that way so we can use any insurance carrier we want for a particular client.
This is not an option with Monumental, unfortunately, since they require their “career agents” to be captive, meaning they can only sell Monumental Life Insurance policies.
A bit of history on Monumental Life Insurance
They’ve been in business since 1858. They have quite an impressive line of insurance related products, including term life, interest sensitive whole life, cancer policies, and accident insurance. Generally speaking, due to their age and great size, they are considered one of the most respected life companies in the U.S.
A few Positives – Financial Strength
They are rated A+ by the rating agency A.M. Best, which is issued to those carriers with superior financial health. They also have over $88 billion of insurance in force, and over $32 billion in assets, both as of 2010 financial statements. Compare that to the insurance giant, Prudential , whose life insurance company (Pruco Life) has just over $22 billion in assets.
Another advantage of doing business with Monumental is their parent company is Aegon, same as parent company for Transamerica Life Insurance, Stonebridge Life Insurance Co. This is a multi-national, enormous company, so it’s hard to think of Monumental ever becoming insolvent under the Aegon Group.
Monumental Products – Term and Whole Life
They seem to offer a wide variety of products and payment plans. Of course Monumental, has your traditional term life insurance policies, but nothing out of the ordinary such as 25 year term life insurance, like ING Reliastar has.
Many reviews pointed to the fact that their whole life policies do grow nicely as far as cash accumulation is concerned, and at guaranteed rates to boot.
Some Complaints I’ve heard about Monumental
First of all, I don’t put much stock in what you read on many review sites, since these are filled with disgruntled customers. In all honesty, it’s not a fair assessment, since “happy” customers don’t tend to write reviews… only the ones who are upset.
But go read any of the agent forums out there. A lot of agents are dissatisfied with Monumental. If you want to know the truth about a company, don’t read the customer reviews. Read the agent reviews.
These are the people who see the inner workings of the company. Glassdoor.com is one such review site offering unbiased reviews from former agents. Most of the reviews are between 3 to 4 stars out of 5. Many clients also listed smoker life insurance ratings as much higher than the competitors.
Most list cons of poor training for new agents, terrible hours, and unrealistic sales quotas. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from speaking to friends in insurance and money manager postitions: sales quotas hurt the customer. This is because agents must sell.
When agents must sell, the unfortunate reality is many agents get cornered into a tough situation, where they must produce, and will do anything to make a sell… even recommend products that are not right for the client. Perhaps they will recommend whole life when only term protection is needed.
Many former, and even current career agents also cite “unethical business practices” at Monumental.
Other Reviews
If you enjoyed this review and found it to be unbiased, please also see our reviews on Ohio National, as well as the giant Monumental Life Insurance, and leave a comment letting us know your thoughts.
For a life insurance quote you can count on, use our quote form on the right. Note: We are NOT Monumental Life Insurance. This is simply a review of the company. Thank you for interest.
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Kathy,
I’m not sure if you read the article or not, but we are not Monumental. This article is a review about Monumental. You will need to call them about your question. thank you.