American United Life Insurance Company Review

AUL is one of our picks for the top whole life insurance companies. In the following American United Life review we will focus on the company’s history, strong ratings, life insurance policies, and the policy riders offered so that you can make an informed decision on who the best life insurance company is — based on your unique need, goals and objectives.

Review of American United Life Insurance Company

The first step to find the best life insurance is to get familiar with all the players in the industry. At Insurance and Estates, we have compiled different life insurance reviews, including our picks for the best dividend paying whole life insurance companies.

About American United Life Insurance Company

American United is a OneAmerica Company. OneAmerica is an over 139 year old company and is one of the fastest growing mutual insurance companies in the U.S.

What is a mutual insurance company?

Mutual insurance companies are owned by policyholders, rather than shareholders, as is the case with publicly traded companies. Rather, mutual insurance companies and policyholders share in the ownership rights of the company, as well as take part in the company’s profits through dividends.

Mutual companies are privately held and operate for the sole benefit of policyholders, rather than for the benefit of stockholders.

American United Life pays an annual cash dividend to policyholders. The amount of dividend to be paid to participating policyholders is determined by the board of directors.

American United Life Ratings

A.M. Best rating A+ (2nd highest rating of 16)

A.M. Best rating of A+ signifies that OneAmerica and AUL have a strong financial foundation and creditworthiness. The company is properly diversified and funded to provide long term security and peace of mind to policyholders.

Standard and Poor’s AA- (4^th highest rating of 22)

Additionally, American United Life Insurance Company has an A+ rating with the BBB.

American United Life Products

OneAmerica provides long term care solutions through The State Life Insurance Company. Annuities and life insurance are offered through American United Life Insurance Company.

Annuity Products

• Fixed Annuities

Life Insurance

• Term Life Insurance
• Whole Life Insurance
• Universal Life Insurance
• Long Term Care Life Insurance

American United Life Insurance Policies

American United Life offers excellent whole life insurance, the company offers both term life and universal life. Although there are benefits to both types of coverage, in our opinion there is a clear winner in the battle between term life vs cash value whole life insurance.

American United Life Term Life Insurance

Term life insurance allows you to leverage a relatively small monthly premium for a large guaranteed death benefit with a lower initial cost than permanent life insurance.

Available for ages 18 – 90, American United Life Insurance Company offers 10, 15, 20 and 30 year term lengths. The policy is renewable to age 90.

AUL’s term life insurance includes a conversion option that allows the insured to convert all or a portion of the policy to permanent coverage. The advantage of conversion term life insurance is you can get at least some type of protection in place and when your income improves you can convert the term to a superior whole life or universal life policy.

 

American United Life Universal Life Insurance

Universal life insurance is a permanent life insurance type that offers the following benefits:

Cash Value: Growing cash value that can be withdrawn or borrowed against.

Flexible Premiums: premiums can be increased or decreased depending on your financial health.

Adjustable Death Benefit: You can raise or lower your death benefit and change the selection on how your death benefit payment will be paid to your beneficiary.

American United Life Whole Life Insurance

• Legacy Whole Life
• Legacy 121 Whole Life
• Liberty Select

With the 3 different whole life insurance policies to choose from, including additional enhancements and riders, AUL is sure to have a policy for everyone, including 10 Pay Whole Life, Whole Life to age 121 and Whole Life to age 100.

Whole life insurance provides specific guarantees including:

• Guaranteed death benefit,
• Guaranteed cash value growth and
• Guaranteed level premiums.

Additional cash value growth is available through dividends. Although not guaranteed, American United Life has paid dividends to participating policyholders for many years.

Dividends are valuable and can be used to:

• Purchase paid up additions
• Pay Premiums
• Earn interest with the company
• Cash Out

Additional Benefits of Whole Life Insurance

Tax free life insurance policy loans

You can take out a tax free life insurance loan by using your cash value as collateral. There is no limit as to what you can do with your policy loan, but we would recommend using it to buy additional income producing assets.

Like it fellow mutual companies New York Life and MassMutual, AUL practices a non-direct recognition approach to life insurance policy loans. Even if there is an outstanding policy loan, AUL continues to pay the same dividend on the cash value. This allows your cash value to continue to accumulate interest and dividends, while simultaneously allowing you to use your policy loan somewhere else. In essence, your money is being put to work two places at once.

How many financial products allow your money to work for you in two places at once? It is this unique feature that makes life insurance an asset that should be part of any diversified portfolio.

Tax deferred cash value growth

The Internal Revenue Code Section 7702 is all about cash value life insurance. One of the incentives offered by the code is that your cash value grows tax deferred. And as mentioned above, policy loans are income tax free. Therefore, if you use policy loans to access your cash value you may never have to pay taxes on your gains.

One word of caution, beware of over funding your policy and creating a modified endowment contract (MEC). If your policy becomes a MEC, many of the provisions of the IRC will not apply to your policy.

Tax free death benefit

The life insurance proceeds from your death benefit go to your beneficiary income tax free. A death benefit is taxed if your estate exceeds the federal estate tax exemption limit. If you have a large estate, careful asset protection using an irrevocable trust may be necessary.

Long Term Care Life Insurance

Issued by State Life Insurance Company, the policy is a LTC+LIFE Hybrid. You can read about by clicking on State Life review over on our life insurance reviews page.

Long term care is one of the leading causes of financial distress and will destroy the best laid wealth building and legacy creating plans if you do not factor in how you are going to deal with the potential need for long term care. For Americans over age 65, there is around a 50% chance that they will need some form of long term care. As people are living longer, that rate will most likely climb.

And long term care is not cheap. You are probably looking at paying around $100,000 a year for a nursing home and $50,000 a year for assisted living. And according to a 2016 Genworth report, in home care runs around $3,800 a month. And these numbers go up every year with inflation. In 10 years time, at 5% inflation, you are looking at almost double the costs.

So what can you do? The first step would be to get informed. We can help you with the life insurance long term care planning side. Simply reach out to us by phone or email to get started.

American United Life Insurance Riders

Living Needs Benefit (Accelerated Death Benefit) Rider: at no additional cost, this living benefit pays out a portion of the death benefit if the insured is diagnosed as terminally ill with a life expectancy of 12 months or less.

Accelerator Paid Up Additions Rider: paid up additions allow the purchase of  paid up additional life insurance through additional premium payments or dividends. 

Conclusion

If you have more questions or would you like to see an illustration of American United Life or any of the other top cash value life insurance companies we represent, please give us a call today for a free life insurance consultation with an advanced markets professional.