Symetra Life Insurance Company Review & Complaints: Life Insurance (2023)

Symetra Life Insurance is a family of financial services companies that offer life insurance, annuities, retirement, and employee benefits products. They are based out of Bellevue, Washington, and serve clients across the country.

For many people looking into purchasing a life insurance policy, they want to know all about the company they’re going to be trusting. Their reviews, what the claim process is like, even their financial strength ratings. Further still, many customers like to have a wide variety of annuities and policy options available, should they happen to need varying degrees of coverage throughout their lives.

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The Symetra Life Insurance Company

Symetra was originally created in 1957 as a financial services subsidiary of Safeco under the name Safeco Life & Investments. The company was sold to an investor group in 2004, at which point it took on the name Symetra Financial Corporation. The company was acquired by Japanese insurance company Sumitomo Life in 2016.

Symetra writes policies for individuals as well as employee benefit plan options. Their focus is on life insurance and retirement planning products, including annuities, but on the employer side, they also offer disability insurance coverage as well as several supplemental health insurance policy options.

Symetra’s headquarters is located in Bellevue, Washington, and they also have 20 offices in other states. Their products are sold through independent agents across the country. Life and retirement products are underwritten by Symetra Life Insurance Company, part of the Symetra group of financial services companies.

What types of insurance products are offered?

Symetra offers both group and individual products, and the options for each differ somewhat although there are numerous affordable Symetra life insurance products.

Individual Products

For individuals, Symetra offers life insurance and annuity products, specifically for retirement purposes. Depending on the person, they may be interested in either a short-term or long-term investment. Having choices can help cut down on the stress associated with finding the right policy.

Life Insurance

Life insurance is available in both permanent and term life insurance options. The permanent policies are universal life insurance – there is no whole life option. Policy information on the site is quite general, without much detail.

Symetra Accumulator IUL is an indexed universal life insurance plan, which means that the cash accumulation account included with the policy is tied to a specific index.

Symetra UL-G is a traditional universal life policy that includes a no-lapse guarantee. This plan includes a terminal illness benefit and has the option to add a return of premium rider.

The site does not name or describe the term life policies that are available, giving only vague, general information.

Annuities

There are three types of annuities available from Symetra.

Fixed deferred annuities are designed to earn interest at a fixed rate and pay out a monthly income amount at a later date.

Fixed indexed annuities, like indexed universal life, has the rate of return on the investment tied to an index. This means a less predictable rate of return, but a greater opportunity for growth.

Income annuities provide immediate income at a guaranteed rate but have less growth potential.

Group Products

Symetra has a list of products that can be combined to create an employee benefits package, offering the option of both employer-paid and voluntary employee-paid benefits.

Select Benefits is Symetra’s suite of supplemental health benefits that are available to employers as employee benefit plans. The suite includes:

• Gap assist, a combination policy that pays for out of pocket costs associated with three different medical situations where the financial obligations can stack up quickly: critical illness, accident, and inpatient hospital charges
• Schedule benefit or per-incident accident insurance, both of which offer a different approach to paying out of pocket costs associated with an accident, including ambulance charges, deductibles, and coinsurance amounts
• Fixed-payment insurance plans which are offered with the ability to customize plans for part-time, hourly, contract, or temporary employees, offering assistance with out of pocket medical costs
• Customized fixed-payment gap plans, which are designed to work with high deductible medical plans
• Self-funded minimum essential benefits (MEC) plans that can be combined with select benefits to meet ACA requirements

Group life insurance and accidental death & dismemberment insurance (AD&D) programs are available as a standard group product and as a supplemental product. The supplemental option allows employees to purchase additional coverage beyond the standard health insurance policy to increase the coverage they get from their employee benefit plan.

Both long-term and short-term disability insurance are available to provide disability income insurance protection for employees. These employee disability insurance policies can be purchased on a contributory or non-contributory basis, the employer pays all or part.

Are Symetra’s insurance rates competitive?

Symetra does not offer online quoting, and instead, it refers visitors to the site to connect with a financial advisor in order to obtain rate information. This is in keeping with the very general information on the website – Symetra wants potential customers to talk with an agent that can help them choose appropriate products – and also close the sale.

Can claims be filed online?

The Symetra website does not offer any specific claims information. There is a general customer service line and an email address available. The phone line is open only during business hours – there is no 24/7 claims line, but that is normal for a life insurance company. The Symetra Life Insurance phone number is 800-796-3872.

Even in the forms section of the website we could not locate any claim forms available. That is pretty unusual, as is the lack of any mention of where or how to file a claim.

There is a login area for existing customers, behind which there may be some claims instructions. However, not useful for the beneficiary of a life insurance policy who may not have login credentials available.

Are the ratings and consumer reviews positive?

Symetra has an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau (BBB), although they are not accredited. They have six complaints on file in the past three years, which is quite low. There are seven reviews left by customers, all of which are negative and describe slow and difficult claims handling.

There is only one review on Yelp, which is a complaint describing a billing issue.

Overall the complaint volume for this company is very low, and we found no red flags in any of the complaints.

What’s the bottom line?

There is not enough information on the products or rates for us to form a solid opinion of the company’s products, but they do have a good reputation. If you are looking to work with an agent and have relatively basic financial planning needs, Symetra looks like a good option to consider.