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In article <9208261749.AA01515@neptune.think.com> lincoln@think.com (Lincoln Marta) writes:
  Has anyone out there had experience with
  Savings Bank Life Insurance Company of Massachusetts??

My wife and I bought policies about 4 years ago.

  I received some information on their Yearly Renewable
  Term Life Insurance. They offer some pretty low rates:
  How do they do it???

  Do you know? Do you know? Do you know?

I don't claim to understand the life insurance industry well enough to answer
this question.

  I'm particularly interested in the following:

  1. Claims paying ability

My wife and I are still alive, so I can't comment on this issue either.

  2. Processing time

If you don't say anything stupid on your application, like "I'm a pilot" or
"I smoked marijuana in college", it takes about a month to get a policy.

  3. Underwriting effectiveness

Dunno.

  4. Policy holder service efficiency

They send me quarterly bills 2 months before they're due.  They promptly
and efficiently processed the AIDS exclusion rider and change-of-beneficiary
forms we sent them.

  5. History of rate increase/decreases

Their rates have been stable for the last 10 years that I know of.  But see
below.

  6. Compliance with state regulations
  7. Financial stability
  8. Years in business

SBLI used to be a quasi-state institution, but as of Jan 1 it's a private
company.  So you can say that they've been in business for 50 years (or
whatever, I don't know the actual founding date) or for 8 months.
I haven't seen any real information on the impact to policyholders (existing
or new) of the change in charter, so I'm not sure whether this change
invalidates their past record or not.  (If anyone knows of any published
information about this, I'd appreciate knowing the reference.)

  9. Friendliness

The "head office" is about what you'd expect from any large organization: you
sometimes get notably friendly or notably gruff people, but mostly you get
average people.  The agent who you start out with works in a local savings
bank; if you don't care for that person walk across the street to another
local savings bank.

Another source of extremely competitive term life insurance is IEEE: if you're
a member they have a great group deal with some commercial carrier.  If you
think of your annual IEEE dues as part of the insurance premium, it's still a
good deal for any reasonably-sized policy.  The danger is that IEEE could
decide (after you've had your first two heart attacks) that it doesn't want
to offer this service to its members anymore.