Clark Howard

Haven Life Insurance Review: What to Know Before Getting a Quote

Haven Life is one of a new breed of life insurance players aiming to streamline the life insurance shopping process. With Haven Life, you do everything online — from getting a quote to e-signing your documents.

In this Haven Life review, we’re going to take a look at the product offerings, how much they cost and what kind of freebies you get when you’re a customer.

Here’s What You Need to Know About Haven Life Insurance

Buying life insurance is something so many of us know we need to do, but we just don’t get around to it. That’s partly because the traditional life insurance application process is really cumbersome.

You used to have to sit down with an agent — either in your home or on the phone — and answer questions about your general health. Then you had to agree to submit to a medical exam.

Once you suffered through the exam, you had to wait for weeks for the lab results to come back and the policy to be written.

Haven Life has re-imagined the whole idea of buying life insurance. Here’s what you need to know before you get a quote:

Table of Contents

    1. What Haven Life Offers
    2. A.M. Best Rating
    3. Getting a Quote Online
    4. Term Life Calculator
    5. Haven Life Plus

1. What Haven Life Offers

Haven Life is an insure-tech company that’s backed by one of the nation’s oldest life insurers — MassMutual.

As such, it offers traditional term life insurance products that require medical underwriting and cutting-edge policies that don't involve a medical exam:

  • Haven Term
  • Haven Term Simplified
  • Salary Protection

Haven Term is a traditional medically underwritten term life policy that offers up to $3 million in coverage with 10, 15, 20 or 30-year term lengths.

Haven Term Simplified is a no-medical-exam term life policy with coverage amounts up to $500,000 in term lengths of 10, 15, 20 or 30 years. (Simplified policies may not be available in all states.)

Finally, Salary Protection is a new no-medical-exam term life product that’s sold exclusively through participating employers. It’s offered during open enrollment periods as a supplement to existing group policy coverage.

We’ll take a deeper look at each of these three products later in the article.

2. A.M. Best Rating

When it comes to selecting a life insurance company, strength and financial stability are very important. You want to be sure the company you’re buying a policy from will be around for a long time.

That’s because if you die while the policy is in force, you have to be confident that the insurance company will be financially solvent and around to pay on your claim.

Of course, nobody can see the future — but we have the next best thing in A.M. Best: It's a credit rating company that focuses on the insurance industry. Using a proprietary system, A.M. Best grades insurance companies on a scale from A++ to F.

Money expert Clark Howard has a rule: Buy life insurance only from companies that are rated A++ and A+, which are the two highest marks. Even an A rating is unacceptable.

The good news here is that Haven Life policies are underwritten by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual), a company that's been around for 160 years and gets an A++ from A.M. Best.

With that kind of history and financial strength, it’s a good bet that Haven Life and MassMutual will be around to pay on claims should you die prematurely.

Remember, getting a grade of A++ is as much assurance that a company will stand the test of time as you can get.

3. Getting a Quote Online

No Haven Life Insurance review would be complete without some pricing data!

We pulled sample policies in June 2020 for a variety of possible life insurance customers. Here are the assumptions we made about three hypothetical customers:

  1. A 45-year-old male, no tobacco use, living in Georgia and looking for $500,000 of coverage for 20 years.
  2. A 30-year-old female, no tobacco use, living in California and looking for $500,000 of coverage for 30 years.
  3. A 25-year-old male, no tobacco use, living in New Jersey and looking for $500,000 of coverage for 30 years.

Haven Term and Haven Simplified Sample Premiums

Now take a look at the rates we found and see how they would potentially change based on your level of health:

Customer Average Good Excellent
  • 45-year-old male
  • No tobacco use
$106.45 $65.97 $56.07
  • 30-year old female
  • No tobacco use
$53.20 $33.91 $27.40
  • 25-year-old male
  • No tobacco use
$65.97 $43.58 $32.81

Those sample rates would apply to either Haven Term or Haven Simplified policies, depending on whether or not the company felt you needed a medical exam.

And the nice thing is once you lock in a premium, the price never changes because these are guaranteed level premiums.

Salary Protection Sample Premium

As mentioned earlier, there is a third option for no-medical-exam coverage that’s available through employers called Salary Protection.

Salary Protection is a 100% no-medical-exam term life insurance product sold through participating employers during open enrollment as a supplement to your existing group policy.

Most traditional group policies pay only one to two times a policyholder’s salary in a lump sum. But Salary Protection pays your beneficiary an amount equal to your paycheck for a minimum of five years and a maximum of up to 15 years.

It’s also a portable benefit, so you can buy it with your current participating employer during open enrollment and then take it with you when you change jobs.

As for the cost of the premium, Haven Life offers the following example in a press release:

"For about $19 per bi-weekly paycheck, a 35-year-old woman could guarantee her current $60,000 salary to her loved ones for up to 15 years, equating to a monthly payout of $5,000 per month."

4. Term Life Calculator

Figuring out how much life insurance you need to purchase is something that stumps a lot of people when they are shopping for a policy.

As a general rule of thumb, Clark Howard recommends buying an amount equal to 10 times your salary, before taxes.

But for an answer to the question of how much to buy that's tailored specifically to your situation, Haven Life offers a term life insurance needs calculator.

When you use the calculator, you’ll be asked to input the following info:

  • Gender
  • Age
  • Nicotine use
  • Health condition
  • State of residence
  • Annual income
  • Family size
  • Debt load

The calculator will recommend a coverage amount for a certain number of years, along with an estimated monthly premium rate.

5. Haven Life Plus

When you get a term life policy from Haven, you get more than insurance: You also get a suite of free additional offerings called Haven Life Plus.

Haven Life Plus is an insurance rider that sits on top of your existing policy. It offers perks the company says are worth more than $300.

These perks touch on estate planning, on-demand health services and emergency planning, among other things:

  • Will creation from Trust & Will ($129 value)*
  • On-demand fitness app Aaptiv ($99 value)
  • Timeshifter app to help fight jet lag ($24.99 value)
  • Free estate planning/secure online vault from LifeSite ($80 value)
  • 15% discount on any single CVS MinuteClinic service

* Offer void in North Carolina

The Haven Life Plus rider is not available in Florida, New York, North Dakota, South Dakota or Washington.

Final Thought

As we’ve shown in this review, Haven Life has automated the process of buying life insurance. There’s no old-school agent you have to deal with at any step of the process. From getting a quote to finalizing your coverage, it’s all done online from any smartphone or computer.

To recap, here are some key takeaways to remember about Haven Life:

  • A++ rated for financial strength
  • The insurance shopping process is done online
  • No-medical-exam policies are available
  • Only sells term life insurance
  • Level premiums mean you pay the same amount each month and it never goes up

If you have questions as you're going through our Haven Life Insurance review, you can reach out to the company via chat, phone or email. Find all the latest contact information here.

Still not sure you need a policy? Read our piece titled What Is Term Life Insurance and Should I Buy It? for the final word before you make up your mind.

Then when you're ready to get shopping, be sure to check out our guide on How to Buy Term Life Insurance. It's got full details on exactly how and where to comparison shop so you can get the best price!

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