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

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

Article by Insurance Expert

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