Is Securian a Good Insurance Company?

Securian Financial is one of the most established names in American life insurance — a company with roots stretching back to 1880, operating today through its primary insurance subsidiaries Minnesota Life Insurance Company and Securian Life Insurance Company with over 23 million customers across North America and more than $1.2 trillion in insurance in force. For consumers evaluating whether Securian belongs in their life insurance consideration set, the answer starts with understanding what the company genuinely does well, where its product line is strongest, and what considerations matter most when deciding whether Securian is the right fit for a specific coverage need — versus one of the many other highly rated carriers competing for the same business.

The question “Is Securian a good insurance company?” does not have a single universal answer, because the right carrier for any given applicant depends on their specific product need, health profile, coverage amount, and planning objectives — not on general reputation alone. Securian is an objectively strong company by every measurable financial metric. Whether it is the strongest choice for a particular applicant’s situation is a separate question — and one that requires comparing Securian’s guidelines, pricing, and product features against a full panel of competing carriers. Understanding what an AM Best rating means and how to use it as one input — not the only input — in carrier evaluation is the right starting framework for this kind of analysis.

Securian Financial — Company Overview and Financial Strength at a Glance

The financial strength picture for Securian Financial is genuinely impressive by any objective measure. An A+ rating from AM Best — the second-highest possible designation — maintained for over 75 consecutive years represents the kind of institutional financial consistency that few carriers can claim. The mutual holding company structure means Securian is not answerable to public shareholders and does not face the quarterly earnings pressure that publicly traded insurers manage — a structural characteristic that generally supports long-term reserve adequacy and conservative investment management. Securian’s investment portfolio is characterized by high credit quality, good sector diversification, and modest allocations to higher-risk asset classes, which AM Best has specifically cited as a supporting factor in its rating affirmations. Understanding how life insurance companies work and what financial strength ratings actually measure in the context of claims-paying reliability puts these metrics in their proper planning context.

Securian’s Individual Life Insurance Product Line

Securian offers a full spectrum of individual life insurance products spanning term, whole life, and multiple forms of universal life — a breadth of product design that positions the company as a potential fit across a wide range of coverage needs and planning objectives. Understanding where each product type fits within that spectrum, and where Securian’s specific offerings compare favorably or less favorably to market alternatives, is the foundation of an honest carrier evaluation.

Term life insurance through Securian provides temporary death benefit coverage for a specified period — typically 10, 15, 20, or 30 years — at level premiums that do not increase during the term. Term life insurance remains the most cost-effective structure for pure income replacement needs, mortgage protection, and business obligation coverage where the need is time-bounded rather than permanent. Securian’s term products are competitively positioned in the market, though the company does not offer online quoting — coverage must be obtained through a financial professional or independent broker. For applicants evaluating whether Securian’s term pricing represents the market’s best available rate for their age, health class, and coverage amount, side-by-side comparison through an independent broker is the only accurate way to assess this, since list pricing means nothing without knowing which underwriting class a specific applicant receives. Using a term life insurance calculator provides a useful preliminary estimate, but the underwriting outcome for any given health profile is what ultimately determines actual cost and the best term life insurance policy for that individual.

On the permanent life insurance side, Securian offers whole life with guaranteed premiums and guaranteed cash value growth, fixed universal life with flexible premium structure and adjustable death benefits, indexed universal life with cash value growth tied to an underlying index with downside protection, and variable universal life with investment-linked cash value and the highest potential upside alongside meaningful market risk. Each of these structures serves a distinct planning purpose. Whole life with cash value suits those who prioritize guarantee and predictability above all else. Guaranteed universal life suits those who want permanent death benefit coverage with minimal cash value accumulation at a lower premium than whole life. Indexed universal life suits those seeking growth potential with principal protection. Variable universal life suits the most risk-tolerant applicants who are comfortable with investment allocation decisions within a life insurance chassis. Securian is genuinely competitive across all four of these permanent structures — the key evaluation question is always whether Securian’s specific pricing, underwriting guidelines, and product features represent the strongest available option for a particular applicant’s profile, not whether the company is capable of providing the product type. The option to convert term to permanent life insurance is also worth evaluating for applicants who start with term coverage and anticipate a future permanent need.

Securian’s Living Benefits and Rider Architecture

Modern life insurance is not solely a death benefit product — and Securian’s individual policies include rider options that allow policyholders to access a portion of the death benefit while living under qualifying circumstances. Life insurance with living benefits is an increasingly important planning feature, particularly for applicants who want their policy to serve as a resource during a serious illness rather than solely as a post-death financial tool. Securian offers an Accelerated Death Benefit rider and a Chronic Illness rider on individual policies, both of which allow early access to death benefit proceeds when specified health conditions are met.

The accelerated death benefit rider activates when a terminal illness diagnosis reduces life expectancy below a defined threshold — typically 12 to 24 months — allowing the policyholder to receive a portion of the death benefit while living to address medical costs, final expenses, or quality of life needs. The chronic illness rider provides access when the insured cannot perform a specified number of activities of daily living or requires substantial supervision due to cognitive impairment — a feature with significant value for policyholders who develop qualifying long-term care needs but are not in a terminal illness situation. These riders represent meaningful living benefit access within the standard individual policy architecture, though the specific benefit calculations, benefit periods, and qualifying conditions vary by product and are important to review carefully before selecting a policy based on its living benefit features.

Securian’s SecureCare — Hybrid Life and Long-Term Care

One of Securian’s most distinctive and consistently recognized individual products is SecureCare — a hybrid long-term care product that combines permanent life insurance with a cash indemnity long-term care benefit in a single policy structure. SecureCare has gone through multiple iterations and is currently offered as a nonparticipating whole life insurance policy with long-term care benefits, designed to address the fundamental planning problem that traditional long-term care insurance creates: the possibility of paying premiums for decades and never needing the benefit, with nothing returned if that scenario occurs.

The cash indemnity structure of SecureCare is a meaningful product differentiator. Rather than reimbursing documented care expenses, a cash indemnity benefit pays the policyholder directly when qualifying care conditions are met — without requiring the submission of receipts or the use of approved providers. This flexibility allows the benefit to fund informal care, family caregiving, or any combination of paid and unpaid care arrangements that the policyholder and family choose. The comparison between hybrid life and traditional LTC insurance is one of the most important planning decisions in the long-term care coverage landscape, and Securian’s SecureCare is one of the carriers most frequently cited in that comparison because of its indemnity structure, return of premium options, and the long track record of the product line. Working with an advisor who has compared the current version of SecureCare against competing hybrid products — including those from other highly rated carriers — produces an honest picture of where Securian’s hybrid offering stands relative to the full market rather than in isolation.

For those considering traditional or hybrid long-term care solutions alongside life insurance, long-term care insurance services through an independent broker provide access to the full panel of available products rather than the single carrier’s offering any direct channel can present.

Securian’s Annuity and Retirement Products

Beyond life insurance and LTC, Securian offers retirement-focused products including individual annuities and pension risk transfer solutions. The annuity product line covers both accumulation-focused and income-focused structures, positioning Securian as a potential participant in the retirement income planning conversation for clients who may already have a life insurance relationship with the company. For applicants evaluating annuity options through Securian specifically, the same independent comparison principle applies: Securian’s annuity products compete against a broad market of fixed, fixed indexed, and income annuity products from dozens of carriers, and the strongest available rate and benefit structure for a specific need is only identifiable through cross-carrier comparison. Reviewing current fixed annuity rates across the full market is the starting point for any annuity evaluation, regardless of which carrier relationship an applicant begins with.

Securian’s Group and Employer Benefits Market

Securian Financial is one of the largest group life insurance carriers in the United States — specifically, the third-largest direct writer of group life insurance by insurance in force. This market position is not incidental; it reflects over a century of institutional focus on the employer benefits market, deep administrative technology infrastructure, and established relationships with large employers, mid-size organizations, and public sector employers nationwide. Many Americans encounter Securian through their employer’s benefits package rather than through individual policy purchase — which means the company’s financial strength, claims-paying reliability, and administrative performance matter directly to millions of employees who may not have chosen the carrier themselves.

The distinction between group and individual life insurance is important context for anyone evaluating Securian through an employer benefits lens. Group coverage through an employer — whether provided by Securian or any other carrier — typically offers lower per-dollar cost than individual coverage for healthy enrollees, simplified enrollment without medical underwriting up to guaranteed issue amounts, and the significant limitation of portability: group coverage ends when employment ends. Securian also offers group long-term care through employer channels, an increasingly valued benefit as awareness of LTC costs and coverage gaps grows among working-age employees.

Securian for Business Life Insurance Needs

Securian’s product breadth and institutional financial strength make it a legitimate candidate for business-oriented life insurance applications — an area where the carrier’s permanent life products, strong rating, and policy flexibility carry particular weight. Business life insurance applications including buy-sell life insurance funded agreements, key person life insurance for executives and critical employees, and executive bonus Section 162 plans all benefit from the stability and claims-paying reliability that a carrier with Securian’s rating history provides — because these are policies that may need to perform decades from today, and financial strength over time matters more than short-term pricing in these applications.

That said, business life insurance applications involve detailed underwriting and case design considerations where carrier selection is driven by a combination of financial strength, product features, underwriting appetite for the specific risk profile involved, and premium competitiveness for the target face amount and structure. No carrier is uniformly optimal across all business life insurance applications — and the carrier that produces the strongest outcome for a $3 million key person case may not be the strongest for a $500,000 buy-sell case. Independent broker comparison across the panel of highly rated carriers that compete in the business market — including Securian — is the only way to identify which carrier produces the strongest combination of terms for any specific business application.

What Securian Does Well and Where Comparison Shopping Still Matters

An honest assessment of Securian Financial as a carrier reaches a clear and straightforward conclusion: this is an objectively strong company. The 145-year operating history, the A+ AM Best rating maintained for over 75 consecutive years, the mutual holding company structure that removes public shareholder pressure, the $1.2 trillion in insurance in force, the $5.5 billion in annual benefits paid, the breadth of product line, and the institutional position as one of the largest group life carriers in the country — all of these indicators point to a company that takes its obligations to policyholders seriously and has the financial capacity to fulfill them.

The question that matters for any specific applicant is more nuanced: is Securian the strongest available carrier for this particular person’s specific need, health profile, coverage amount, and planning objective? That question cannot be answered by reviewing Securian’s financial ratings alone — it requires comparing Securian’s underwriting guidelines, premium pricing, product features, and rider options against the competing carriers that serve the same market. A consumer who selects Securian because it is a strong company — without comparing it to other strong companies — may be paying more than necessary, receiving less favorable policy terms than an alternative carrier would provide, or missing a product feature that another carrier offers at a comparable price. Working with an independent life insurance broker who accesses the full market rather than a single carrier’s product line is the structure that ensures Securian is selected when it genuinely is the best fit — and that a better-fit carrier is identified when one exists. A second opinion on any existing or proposed life insurance quote through an independent broker costs nothing and frequently reveals meaningful differences in pricing, terms, or product architecture.