Insurance Company Ratings Am Best – Life Insurance Company Rankings Vs Ratings

Insurance Company Ratings Am Best

Making Sense of the different rating systems is made easier with life insurance company rankings.

The basic purpose of the rating system is to offer an opinion about the creditworthiness of any given life insurance company. Where it gets a little complicated is that each of the independent insurance company rating institutions uses a slightly different scale. The way each comes up with a rating for a particular company is proprietary (not to mention very complicated.) In addition, the meaning of each grade or rating is unique to each independent rating institution.

Four of the top independent insurance company rating institutions are:

Standard & Poor

A.M. Best

Moody

Fitch

The rating scales used by the top four mentioned above range from three A’s, an A with one or two plus or minus signs, through “F,S,” with many variations in between. In some cases you will see repeated letters, such as “BBB,” or a combination of letters, such as “Baa.” Yet other companies use a plus or minus symbol to further categorize the findings. In some cases an overall rating of “A” can be sub-divided four times with the use of plus or minus signs. In other cases, the overall rating of “A” can be sub-divided three times. This can make the information quite difficult to compare. Check Internet #1 Insurance Company Ratings Am Best right now!

Since each is using their own unique system, it can be confusing to make an educated comparison. This is where life insurance company rankings can help.

To truly understand how to compare policies fairly, use a ranking system. For example, look at each of the top four independent institutions grading system, and rank their marks from the highest grade to the lowest.

In other words, ranking is a way of looking at ratings in an “apples to apples” way. Make a column for each of the independent institutions listed above and for each column, list the ratings from best to worst. The top rating could be “three A’s, A++, or even upper case A with two lower case a” for example. Continue down each column until you have all of the possible grades listed for each. Then number each row with the best possible rating row to be numbered “1.” The lowest possible rating may get a ranking number as high as 21. With this system it is logical to say the lower the ranking number, the better the rating. Check Internet #1 Insurance Company Ratings Am Best right now!

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