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Gerber Life Insurance Review
By Jessica Walrack MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
Looking for life insurance for yourself, your spouse, or your child? While the Gerber brand is well-known for baby food, it also has a branch that offers life insurance. To help you decide if Gerber Life is right for you, here’s an in-depth review of the plan options, company credentials, customer ratings, and more. While it didn’t make our list of the best life insurance companies of 2022, it’s worth considering if you need children’s coverage and want an easy online application process.
Table of contents
- Gerber’s services
- Gerber’s credentials
- Gerber’s accessibility
- Gerber’s customer satisfaction
- Gerber vs. the competition
Gerber Life insurance overview
The Gerber Life Insurance Company was founded in 1967 by the Gerber Products Company and is currently headquartered in White Plains, New York. It’s a member of Western & Southern Financial Group Inc.—which has over $62 billion of life insurance in force. Overall, it aims to provide budget-friendly child and adult life insurance policies to Americans.
Gerber’s services
What types of life insurance plans can you get from Gerber Life? Here’s the product lineup.
What it offers
Whether you’re looking for coverage for a newborn or someone up to 80 years old, Gerber has a solution.
Grow Up Plan Children’s Insurance
The Gerber Life Grow Up Plan is a whole life insurance policy available for children up to 14 years old. You can purchase up to $50,000 worth of coverage and it’ll double to $100,000 when the child turns 18. It also has a cash value component that builds with each monthly payment. Once the child becomes an adult, they can buy more coverage at the standard rate without their health or job type being taken into consideration.
Gerber Life Insurance College Plan
The Gerber Life College plan is a life insurance policy that pays out at a maturity date that’s 10 to 20 years in the future. It’ll also pay out if the policyholder passes away. Guaranteed payments range from $10,000 up to $150,000, and can be used to pay for college expenses or anything else.
Term Life Insurance
Term life insurance is available for policyholders from 18 to 70 years old. You can choose from terms of 10, 20, or 30 years, and coverage amounts range from $100,000 to $300,000. You can also request up to $1 million in coverage by phone. When your term ends, you can renew but your premium will be redetermined based on your age and health at the time. Medical exams aren’t typically required unless you’re over 51 and request over $100,000 in coverage.
Whole Life Insurance
Whole life insurance coverage is available online in amounts ranging from $50,000 up to $300,000 for those who are 18 to 70 years old. If you need more, you can call to request up to $1,000,000 in coverage. Once a policy is in place, your coverage and rate will stay the same as long as you keep up with your monthly premium payments. A cash value component will also build over time which you can borrow against throughout your life. Again, medical exams aren’t typically required unless you’re over 51 and request over $100,000 in coverage.
Guaranteed Issue Life Insurance
It can be harder to get approved for life insurance once you pass 50 years old. Gerber Life’s guaranteed life insurance plan is a type of final expense insurance that offers guaranteed coverage for policy owners between the ages of 50 and 80. You won’t have to undergo a medical exam or fill out a lengthy questionnaire to qualify and can get coverage from $5,000 up to $25,000. The coverage is permanent and has a cash value component.
Accident Protection
Gerber’s Accident protection plan is an accidental death and dismemberment policy (AD&D). If you aren’t familiar with AD&D policies, they pay out a death benefit to your beneficiary if you die due to a covered accident. They also pay out a benefit to you if you lose a body part or its function due to a covered accident. Coverage is available for individuals from 18 to 69 years old in amounts from $50,000 up to $250,000. No physical medical exam is required and you won’t have to answer many health questions to qualify.
Gerber life insurance coverage
| Age range | Available plan | Coverage | Cash value |
| >14 years | Grow Up plan | Up to $50,000 | Yes |
| >18 years | College plan | $10,000 up to $150,000 | No |
| 18-69 years | Accident protection | $50,000 up to $250,000 | No |
| 18-70 years | Term life | $100,000 to $1,000,000 | No |
| 18-70 years | Whole life | $100,000 to $1,000,000 | Yes |
| 50-80 years | Guaranteed life | $5,000 up to $25,000 | Yes |
What it doesn’t offer
Gerber Life offers limited coverage amounts. You can only get up to $300,000 in term or whole life insurance online, although you can request up to $1 million if you call the company. Gerber’s permanent life insurance policy options are also limited as there are no universal life plans.
Gerber life insurance cost
| Available plan | Coverage | Monthly Cost Quote |
| Grow Up plan | $50,000 | $83.75 |
| College plan | $50,000 | $231.67 |
| Accident protection | $50,000 | $5.23 |
| Term life | $100,000 | $18.75 |
| Whole life | $100,000 | $80.33 |
| Guaranteed life | $25,000 | $84.79 |
Gerber life insurance cash value
If you’re interested in a policy with a cash value component, you’ll want to consider the Grow Up, whole life, and guaranteed life options. These enable you to build cash value over time which you can borrow against during your life.
Gerber’s credentials
Is Gerber Life a legit, reputable provider of life insurance? Here’s what we found.
Licenses and registrations
Gerber Life is licensed to sell annuities, health insurance, and life insurance in all 50 U.S. states and Puerto Rico.
Awards and certifications
The company also earned an A rating (Excellent) from A.M. Best, suggesting that it has an excellent ability to meet its financial obligations.
Regulatory or legal actions
In 2020, Gerber Life paid out a voluntary settlement of $2.5 million in recoveries and interest to claimants and a civil penalty of $1.1 million to the North Carolina Department of Insurance. The payments came after an examination of Gerber’s claims practices and procedures revealed several violations. For example, the company was found to require unnecessary information which delayed claim payments. Gerber Life’s children’s life policies also came under fire for misrepresentation in 2021 but the claims were dismissed.
Gerber’s accessibility
Who can get life insurance with Gerber and how easy is the process?
Availability
Gerber Life is available in all 50 states and you can sign up online or over the phone.
Contact information
You can contact Gerber’s customer service phone line at 1-800-704-2180, or 1-800-285-7701 if you’re using a video relay service. Representatives are available Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET. You can also email, fax, or write to the company for non-urgent issues.
User experience
Gerber Life provides a very organized site structure that makes it easy to learn about all of its different policies. Each product page includes the main features and benefits along with a FAQ section. You can also request quotes online for each type of life insurance by filling out a short form. Once submitted, you can adjust the terms and coverage to see how it impacts your monthly premium amount.
Limitations
There’s no online chat option, customer service support on weekends, or brick-and-mortar offices you can visit.
Gerber’s customer satisfaction
Here’s a look at how Gerber Life fares when it comes to customer satisfaction.
Customer complaints
According to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), Gerber Life had a complaint index of 0.70 in 2021. The National Complaint Index is 1.00 so an index below that means a company had fewer complaints than are expected. As for the complaints with Better Business Bureau (BBB), Gerber Life has had 99 closed in the past three years and 34 closed in the past 12 months.
Third-Party ratings
Gerber Life wasn’t mentioned in J.D. Power’s 2022 U.S. Individual Life Insurance Study. It’s also not accredited by the BBB and earned 1.17/5 stars after 24 reviews. That said, most ratings skew negative on the BBB as people generally go there to file complaints.
Gerber vs. the competition
How does Gerber stack up to the competition? Here’s a comparison of its term life insurance offering compared to that of Mutual of Omaha, Haven Life, and Globe.
| Gerber | Haven life | Globe | Mutual of Omaha | |
| Coverage | $100,000 to $1,000,000 | $250,000 to $3 million | $5,000 to $100,000 | $100,000 up to $999,000 |
| Rates | $18.75 to $52.75 | $10.78 to $179.66 | $2.92 to $30.24 | $9.59 to $53.49 |
| Medical exam | For 51+ with $100k+ of coverage | In most cases | No | NA |
| Term | 10, 20, 30 | 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 | NA | 10, 15, 20, 30 |
Gerber life insurance FAQs
Now for answers to some frequently asked questions about Gerber Life insurance.
How we evaluated Gerber Life insurance
We evaluated Gerber Life’s insurance offerings by looking into the company’s services, credentials, accessibility, customer satisfaction, and competition. To understand the company’s offerings, we researched the various policy types along with the eligibility requirements, coverage amounts, terms, and restrictions for each. For credentials, we looked into the company’s licensing, awards, and any legal actions that have been brought against it.
We also assessed accessibility by researching the company’s service area, customer support availability, and the user experience on its website. To understand how satisfied Gerber Life customers are, we reviewed customer complaints with the NAIC and ratings with third parties including JD Power and Associates and the BBB. Lastly, we compared Gerber Life’s term life insurance against the offerings of competitors including Mutual of Omaha, Haven Life, and Globe.
Summary of Miami Herald’s Gerber review
- Gerber Life insurance offers a lineup of policies including the Grow Up plan for children, a college savings plan for children, whole and term plans for adults, guaranteed life plans for seniors, and accident insurance.
- Coverage amounts vary by policy type but you can get up to $300,000 in whole or term coverage online.
- You can call Gerber Life to request up to $1 million in whole or term coverage.
- Medical exams aren’t typically required unless you are 51 or older and requesting over $100,000 in coverage.
- Gerber Life doesn’t offer any universal life insurance options.
- The company doesn’t have any stand-out marks for customer satisfaction but has fewer complaints than are expected for an insurer of its size.
- The term coverage is on the expensive side.
- You can often get coverage quickly and easily online in a matter of minutes.
Want to compare Gerber Life to other providers? Check out the top 9 life insurance companies of 2022!
