Ohio National Life Insurance Review

Ohio National is one of the top whole life insurance companies in the marketplace. In this Ohio National life insurance review, we will dive into the strengths of the company, its ratings, its history and its different policies and features. Is Ohio National the right company for you?

Review of Ohio National Life Insurance Company

Taking an inventory of you needs, goals and objectives will help you find the right company that fits your specific requirements. In the U.S., there are over 800 companies offering life insurance and annuities. Finding the right company can be a bit daunting. As a result, we have composed our list of the best dividend paying whole life insurance companies, which includes Ohio National.

About Ohio National Financial Services

Ohio National Financial Services, Inc. is the parent company for The Ohio National Life Insurance Company and Ohio National Life Assurance Corporation, which issues the insurance and annuity products.

Ohio National Life Insurance Company has been around for over 108 years. In that time the company has shown a strong commitment to its policyholders as a mutual insurance company.

What is a mutual life insurance company?

A mutual insurance company is structured so that the main focus is on policyholders and clients, rather than on maximizing profits for stockholders. A mutual insurance company is owned by the policyholders. Participating policyholders share in the profits of the mutual company through dividends.

Ohio National Ratings

As of October 2018, Ohio National boasts strong ratings from the top ratings agencies.

• A.M. Best rating: A+
• Standard & Poor’s rating: A
• Moody’s rating: A1
• Comdex Ranking: 87

In addition, Ohio National Financial Services is an accredited business with the BBB and maintains an A+ rating. (1)

Ohio National Financial Services Products

Ohio National Financial Services offers products and services in six different areas:

Life Insurance

• Term Life Insurance
• Universal Life Insurance
• Variable Life Insurance
• Whole Life Insurance

Annuities

• Fixed Annuities
• Fixed Index Annuities
• Variable Annuities

Disability Income Insurance

• Business Overhead Expense
• Business Buy-Sell

Retirement Plans (group variable annuities)

• Full Service Platform
• Investment-Only Platform

Business Solutions

• Executive Fringe Benefits
• Business Owner Needs
• Retirement Plans

Securities

• Full Service Broker/Dealer Subsidiary
  

Ohio National Life Insurance Policies

Ohio National Life Insurance Company offers both term life and permanent life insurance coverage.

Although there are benefits to all types of coverage, in our opinion there are major distinctions to be made when deciding between term life insurance vs whole life insurance.

Benefits of Term Life Insurance

• Lower Initial Cost
• Income Protection
• Mortgage Protection
• Conversion Option

Benefits of Whole Life Insurance

• Business Succession Planning
• Buy Sell Agreements
• Key Man Insurance
• Estate Planning
• Infinite Banking
• Executive Bonus Plans
• Deferred Compensation Plans
• Retirement Planning
• Wealth Building

Ohio National Life Insurance Policies: Different Plans and Features

Ohio National offers term life and permanent life insurance, also known as cash value life insurance. Among its permanent life offerings are whole life, universal life and variable life.

Term Life Insurance

Ohio National offers convertible term life insurance available for 10, 15, or 20 years through Ohio National Life Assurance Corporation. The company offers two different conversion options: “Basic” and “Plus”.

Basic term life conversion option is for someone who has no plans to convert their policy and just wants the inexpensive death benefit protection term offers.

Plus term life conversion option allows the term to be converted to whole life, universal life or variable life insurance.

Universal Life Insurance

Universal Life provides flexible permanent coverage with both a death benefit and cash value growth. You determine your premium amount and timing of your premium payments. The flexibility inherent in Universal Life is dependent on your cash value. Your cash value can grow via interest credited from investment returns in the company’s general account, which currently guarantee at least a 2.5% return.

Variable Universal Life

Variable Universal Life offers the benefits of Universal Life with an additional opportunity to grow your cash value through the allocation of premiums to variable portfolios that invest in stocks, bonds and other instruments. Your cash value growth is dependent on the performance of the investments in the sub accounts.

Ohio National Whole Life Insurance

Ohio National whole life insurance provides permanent coverage with guaranteed cash value growth.

Ohio National practices non-direct recognition, which means the company continues to credit the full cash value in your policy when computing dividends, even if you have an outstanding policy loan.

Ohio National Whole Life Insurance policy options include:

• Prestige Value III: the lowest priced whole life product offered.
• Prestige 10 Pay: 10-year, limited-pay whole life insurance.
• Prestige 100: lifetime benefit whole life insurance with premiums paid to age 100.
• Prestige Max II: provides whole life coverage that is “paid-up” at age 65.

Whole Life Insurance Guarantees

Whole life insurance is permanent coverage and offers specific guarantees, including:

• Guaranteed death benefit,
• Guaranteed cash accumulation and
• Guaranteed level premiums.

Additional cash value growth is available through annual dividends paid to participating policyholders. Although not guaranteed, Ohio National has paid dividends to its policyholders of participating whole life insurance for 93 straight years.

Dividends are valuable and can be used to:

• Purchase paid up additions to increase death benefit and cash value
• Pay policy premiums for a period of time
• Earn interest in the company’s interest bearing account
• Receive the dividend as cash

Ohio National’s Dividends Rate has hovered around 8.3% at the high (2000, 2001) to 6.0% (2013-2016) at the low over the last 17 years. For 2018 and 2019, Ohio National’s dividend for participating policyholders is 5.40%, with over $100 million in dividends expected to be paid out in 2019.

We have been in a low interest rate environment for a long time so an increase in interest rates might be approaching. If so, you can expect the dividend interest rates offered by whole life insurance companies to increase accordingly.

Life Insurance Riders

Ohio National’s life policies come with different riders that add additional benefits to your coverage, including:

Chronic Illness and Terminal Illness Riders: you can receive an early portion of your death benefit if you are diagnosed with a qualifying chronic or terminal illness.

Additional Paid Up Insurance (API) Rider: allows you to add additional premium payments to your policy to purchase “paid-up” life insurance, increasing your death benefit and cash value.

Guaranteed Insurability Option (GIO) Rider: provides you the option of adding additional life insurance with no proof of insurability required. This is a great optional rider to add to life insurance for children as it will provide them the ability to increase coverage down the road, even if they have developed some sort of condition that would typically make them ineligible for coverage.

Additional Benefits of Cash Value Life Insurance

Tax free life insurance policy loans

You can borrow from Ohio National’s general account using your cash value as collateral. Your cash value life insurance loans are income tax free. Additionally, you can withdraw cash from your policy up to your basis without creating a taxable event.

Tax deferred cash value growth

IRC 7702 offers tax incentive to cash value life insurance. One such incentive is the cash value in the policy grows tax deferred. And although it is tax deferred, if you practice proper policy management, you may never need to pay taxes on the cash value growth.

The additional paid up insurance (API) rider can also be used to increase the policy’s death benefit and cash value.

However, when using the API rider it is important to understand that over-funding a policy can result in the policy being considered a modified endowment contract (MEC). Most companies have safeguards in place to notify you if you are in danger of “MEC’ing” your policy.

Tax free death benefit

The life insurance death benefit is also not taxed. Your beneficiary receives the death benefit without creating a taxable event. The only time income tax may need to be paid on a death benefit is if your estate exceeds the current federal estate tax exemption. In addition, some states have an inheritance tax.

Ohio National Life Insurance Review Conclusion

Now as you can see, we here at I&E firmly believe that Ohio National is an excellent choice for life insurance whether or not you’re seeking a term or a permanent life insurance policy.  What we don’t know is if they will be an excellent option for you!

This is because…

Like every insurance company out there, Ohio National has its own set of underwriting guidelines which it uses to determine who they will and won’t insure and at what cost.  Now in some cases this may make you an ideal candidate for Ohio National while in other situations it could mean that there might be another insurance company that may be a better fit.

We simply…

Won’t know until after we’ve had an opportunity to speak with you and learn a little bit more about your situation and what health or lifestyle choices you have which could affect the outcome of your life insurance application.

But don’t fret…

Even if Ohio National isn’t the “right” choice for you, we work with dozens of different insurance companies, so chances are we here at I&E should be able to find an insurance company that will be the right fit for you.

So, what are you waiting for?  Give us a call today and let us show you what we can do for you!