I’ve been contracted to sell Ohio National’s products for three years now, and I’m contracted with a dozen or so other life insurance companies, so I think that makes be the ideal person to write an Ohio National Life Insurance review, as I can compare them to other carriers, and discuss the pros and cons of going with Ohio National.
#1 Advantage of Ohio National Life Insurance – Financial Stability
During these economic times, I get asked more and more frequently about a company’s financial strength and/or ratings. After all, who wants to pay premiums for years into a life insurance contract, and worry about whether the company will be able to make good on a death benefit payout?
Fortunately, I never have a problem “selling” the stability of Ohio National. They’ve been in business over 100 years (just celebrated their 100th anniversary in 2009, in fact). And even after all that time, they are still a growing, vibrant company. They’ve somehow managed to grow their individual life sales business for a remarkable 21 years straight.
Also they have over $30 billion in assets, and are rated A+ by A.M. Best, their second best of 16 ratings, which means their ability to meet ongoing claims obligations is “superior”, in the opinion of A.M. Best. To compare their company size to a large cap insurance giant, Ohio National is pretty small. For example, ING has over $362 Billion of assets under management.
Having said that, Ohio National still has a wonderful, successful history, and I’d feel comfortable recommending their products to anyone. For more information, click here to Review Ohio National Life Insurance Co.’s history and financial info.
No Gimmicks – No Games
When you learn about the inner workings of how some insurance companies manipulate their whole life and universal life illustrations to show tremendous cash value growth, Ohio Life is like a breath of fresh air. They don’t play those games.
Many other companies as of late, when needing to generate revenues, have increased their cost of insurance by increasing mortality expenses, which forces clients to add more premiums. Ohio Life Insurance hasn’t raised mortality expenses ever, and has lowered them three different times.
Advantage #2 – Excellent Term Life and Whole Life Pricing
And what review would be complete without a discussion about pricing? Well, Ohio National is consistently among the top 10 in pricing for term and whole life insurance on Term4Sale, as well as in my quote results as provided by Compulife. Sign up for quotes using our form on the right to compare Ohio National with other companies.
Please also note that Ohio National’s offerings are not limited to life insurance in Ohio. Their products are approved in most states.
Intangibles that Make Ohio National Great
One thing I like about Ohio National as an agent, is they offer a deferred compensation plan for their agents. I don’t know of any other insurance company who does this. Basically, if you meet a certain level of annual premium or sales, then they contribute to a deferred comp plan on your behalf at some percentage of your sales. I’ve never done enough business with them to qualify yet, since most of my business is submitted through Genworth and Prudential, but the point is they take care of their agents, and I think that’s just good business.
A Couple Negatives… Possibly
The only issues I have with Ohio National is that their underwriting guidelines tend to be a bit more strict than at other companies. So if you get a quote for a 44 year old healthy male, for 10 year term life insurance, and find that Ohio National shows up as having the lowest quote, assuming you can qualify for their best health class, just be careful to check with an agent to make sure you can actually qualify for that rate.
Here’s what I mean. If you review Ohio National’s underwriting guidelines, you’ll see that they don’t currently allow blood pressure treatment within their Super Preferred class. Also, their weight chart is not very forgiving. So say you take Lisinopril and have well controlled high blood pressure, and are 5’10, 200 lbs, you’d have two reasons you couldn’t qualify for Ohio National’s best rating… your hypertension medication and your weight, since their max weight for a 5’10 person is 190 lbs for their best class.
If you applied to a company with more liberal guidelines, such as Genworth, you’d be able to qualify for their best class, and Genworth’s premium would end up coming in lower at their best class than Ohio National’s premium at their 2nd best class.
To be fair, you can argue that the reason Ohio National has been successful for so long is because they are more careful with their underwriting. So even though they may not “give the farm away”, isn’t that actually somewhat a good thing for their policyholders, to know that they carefully and conservatively assess the risks they’ll insure?
No Internet Leads
The other issue I have with them is they don’t allow sales that come in from internet leads. So for example, Select Quote or Accuquote don’t quote Ohio National, as well as many other life insurance agencies who primarily generate their leads online. We do have a contract with Ohio National, however, and leads from our website have been approved as acceptable.
Maybe you can guess why. How serious is the Google searcher for “cheap term life insurance quotes” about their life insurance search? These type of internet shoppers get several quotes, and more competition leads to a lower placement ratio.
Again, I can defend them for their stance here. Internet leads are not always the best quality leads. A lot of the sales end up getting withdrawn. So Ohio National has noticed that trend in their new business department, and one day said: ‘Hey, we’re spending time and money processing all these cases, and far too few of them are panning out’, so you could argue they made a good business decision in banning internet lead business.
If you liked this review, please also see our Monumental Life Insurance review and leave a comment, “Like” the article or Google Plus 1 it please.
Overall, I’m very happy with Ohio National, and would recommend them to anyone, including my closest friends and family, and anyone reading this post. To request a term life insurance quote, please use our form on the right. If you have any questions about my review, please call me at 877-996-9383.