Allianz Life Pro+ Advantage Insurance Review

Pros Explained

• No-medical-exam policies available: Accelerated underwriting allows some healthy applicants up to age 60 to get coverage up to $1 million without a medical exam.
• Wide selection of riders available: Not all insurance companies offer the same level of customization. Allianz has a wide selection of riders from which you can choose to customize your life insurance policy.
• Superior financial strength: Allianz has an A+ (Superior) financial strength rating from AM Best, which indicates the company is in a superior position to honor its insurance obligations, such as paying claims.
• Interest lock feature: Allianz Life’s Pro+ Advantage plan accumulations earn interest according to market performance. The interest lock feature allows you to lock your interest rate at any time during the crediting period for that rate to apply throughout the rest of that period. However, you can only use this feature once per year.
• Fewer complaints than expected: Allianz received fewer complaints than expected over the last three years. This indicates that customers are satisfied with the company.

Cons Explained

• No online quotes: To get a quote, you’ll need to contact an insurance agent.
• Only one type of life insurance available: Allianz Life currently only offers one type of life insurance—its Pro+ Advantage plan, which is a fixed indexed universal life (IUL) insurance policy. IUL policies offer the opportunity for the cash value to grow according to one or more stock market indexes.
• 12-year surrender period: Although you can cancel your coverage at any time, if you cancel within the first 12 years, you’ll incur a surrender charge, which reduces the cash value you’ll receive when you cancel the policy. Surrender charges are not uncommon, but this one is on the long side.

Complaint Index

Each year, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) releases a complaint index for each life insurance company. The index is a way for consumers to measure how many complaints a company received and compare that company’s record of complaints to others. If a company has a complaint index of 1.00, it means it received the number of complaints expected based on its size. An index greater than 1.00 means it received more complaints than expected. And an index below 1.00 represents fewer complaints than expected.

The average complaint index for Allianz Life was 0.20 over the last three years, which is well below the industry standard of 1.00 and suggests customer satisfaction is not a problem for Allianz.

Third-Party Ratings

Allianz Life has an A+ (Superior) financial strength rating from AM Best. This is the second-highest AM Best rating and means the rating agency thinks Allianz has a superior ability to meet its future insurance policy and contractual obligations.

Most of our best life insurance companies have an A+ (Superior) rating or above.

Policies Available 

Allianz Life only sells index universal life insurance, and you must contact an agent to apply for and purchase a policy.  

Fixed Indexed Universal Life

Indexed universal life (IUL) insurance is a type of universal life (UL) insurance in which cash value gains are pegged to a stock market index, such as the S&P 500. With Allianz Life’s Pro+ Advantage policy, you can also tie your interest rate to the Bloomberg US Dynamic Balance II ER Index, PIMCO Tactical Balanced ER Index, or a blended index. 

Available Riders

Most insurance companies offer additional coverage options that you can add to your policy, called riders. Most riders increase your premium, but some can be added to your policy at no upfront cost.

Allianz offers the following selection of riders and benefits:

Child Term Rider

With this rider, you can add a small amount of term coverage to your own policy for your child. When they become an adult, children can convert this to a term policy without underwriting.

Enhanced Liquidity Rider

This rider allows you to waive the surrender charge of your policy. A surrender charge is a fee you must pay to cash out your life insurance policy or make withdrawals. By waiving the surrender charge, this rider increases the cash value you can access during the surrender period.

Loan Protection Rider

This rider protects your policy from lapsing in case of an outstanding policy loan. 

Additional Term Rider

This rider allows you to increase your coverage temporarily. You can add up to 2 times the amount of your existing coverage. 

Waiver of Specified Premium Rider

This rider allows you to waive your premium if you become disabled, but you must specify the premium amount you wish to waive when you buy the rider.

ADB: Chronic Illness Rider

This rider is a type of accelerated death benefit (ADB) rider and is included at no cost. It accelerates a portion of the death benefit if you become chronically ill or cognitively impaired. 

ADB: Terminal Illness Rider

This rider also is included with the policy and lets you access up to $1 million of the death benefit if you have a terminal illness with a life expectancy of less than 12 months. 

Callout: Important: If you accelerate the death benefit via any type of accelerated benefit rider, the amount your beneficiaries receive will be reduced. 

Customer Service

Allianz Life’s website is easy to use, and you can find a link to its fact sheet containing plan highlights online. Allianz Life does not have an online chat available, but you can contact the company using the website email contact form.

If you need to contact customer service, you can reach them by email, mail, phone, or fax. They are available by phone at 800-950-5872 Monday through Friday between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. CT.

Our Methodology: How We Review Life Insurance Carriers

We designed a comprehensive ranking methodology based on consumer priorities and life insurance company fundamentals to rank more than 90 insurers across five general categories: financial stability, customer satisfaction, product and feature variety, the overall buying experience, and cost.

In order to do this, we collected over 5,000 data points and scored each company based on 55 metrics. We grouped metrics by category to see how insurers performed in each; we then weighted category scores to determine how companies performed overall.

To learn more, read our full Life Insurance Methodology.