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Select Quote Review

Researcher & Writer
April 07, 2020

SelectQuote is a life insurance sales agency that offers customers choices from around 10 different companies. Select Quote is the self proclaimed #1 Term Life Sales Agency in America. And if you are reading this SelectQuote review, you might be asking, "what makes SelectQuote #1?"

Like SelectQuote we work with a variety of partners including some of the top rated best life insurance companies in the united states representing both exam and no medical exam life insurance

Throughout the years of offering online term life insurance quotes, as well as permanent coverage including whole life insurance quotes, we have had many conversations with clients about one of our largest competitors: Select Quote.

For this reason, we figured that we would provide a quick review on what we feel are the biggest strengths and weakness of Select Quote Life Insurance.

About SelectQuote

Charan Singh founded SelectQuote in 1985, establishing the first direct-to-consumer life insurance brokerage in the US. Note: as of November 20, 2017, Mr. Singh is no longer the CEO of SelectQuote. Tim Danker is now the CEO, as well as President of SelectQuote.

Do a quick search for Select Quote and you will see the company pop up with the page heading of Best Term Life Insurance Quotes and Rates on the company's website header. So you can tell right away that the company is interested in selling term life insurance.

However, if you look at the options on the top of the home page, you will also see a tab marked other insurance. By clicking on other insurance you will be brought to a page for SelectQuote Auto and Home Insurance or SelectQuote Medicare Supplement Insurance. And no, we are not about to do Select Quote Auto or Home reviews. We are into life insurance; that is our expertise, so we will stick with reviewing Select Quote Life Insurance.

So you see from the beginning that the company offers more than simple term life insurance and you can bet you will get asked if you currently have home or auto insurance, and even medicare supplemental insurance. Which is fine, if you need home or auto insurance.

And if you show an interest in the company's medicare supplement insurance you will be taken to another site: SelectQuote Senior.

SelectQuote Senior allows you to compare medicare plans from 20 or so different companies. It appears that Select Quote Senior does pretty well as it has some good reviews form Trust Pilot, a third party review platform.

Now, we say all this because we are trying to give you a complete picture of what SelectQuote is and what they are all about.

In the end, this review is focused exclusively on Select Quote life insurance.

Select Quote reviews

We want to address both the pros and cons of Select Quote. Before we do, let's talk a little about the company.

Founded in 1985, SelectQuote was one of the first direct marketing agencies that provided unbiased price comparisons of your best life insurance rates from highly-rated companies.

Their early adaption to innovative technology allowed the life insurance buying experience to move from a slow and cumbersome process to a completed process in a fraction of the time it took prior to Select Quote arriving on the scene. Newer platforms like TermLife2Go and PolicyGenius have a lot to thank Select Quote for.

In fact, SelectQuote should still be considered one of the premier insurance agencies out there. They certainly think so as they tout themselves as the #1 Term Life Insurance Agency. And really, who can blame them for making such a claim with their exceptional product line of insurance carriers that they offer and their outstanding customer service!

If it sounds as though we at TermLife2Go are impressed with SelectQuote, you’re right. There are many aspects of the Selectquote term life insurance business model that we considered when we built our agency.

The pros to working with Select Quote

So what are the benefits of choosing select quote for your term life insurance? For starters, let's take a look at the companies they offer.

Select Quote represents multiple carriers

SelectQuote has more than one life insurance company to choose from, rather than companies that require captive agents, such as State Farm, which only sells policies from State Farm. And while there is nothing wrong with choosing life insurance from a captive agent, it does mean that you are getting one option, and only one option.

Why should options matter?

Well, if you truly want cheap life insurance, you need to have choices because there is no one company that has the lowest prices. Further, a captive agent is bound to the policies that their company offers and if they don't have the right policy for you they may not bring it up.

Now any fair review of Select Quote will point out that the company truly does provide some excellent life insurance company options. As the company’s slogan says: “We shop, you save!”

Unlike many other agencies out there that only offer a few insurance companies, SelectQuote compares the prices of 10 different insurance companies, which is probably where their name came from, since you get to "select a quote".

Select Quote Life Insurance companies

  1. Banner Life/William Penn
  2. Transamerica Life Insurance Company
  3. American General Life Insurance Company
  4. Pruco Life Insurance Company
  5. Fidelity Life Association
  6. The Lincoln National Life Insurance Company
  7. Protective Life Insurance Company
  8. United of Omaha Life Insurance Company
  9. Globe Life and Accident Insurance Company
  10. SBLI of Massachusetts

Selectquote also lists Companion Life Insurance Company as one of the carriers they represent, which is the name for Mutual of Omaha in New York.

Anyway, back to the point we were trying to make---with Select Quote you have options.

Also, SelectQuote agents are trained to do their very best to ensure that from these companies, you’ll be placed with the insurance carrier that is best for you, not one that is best for them! So, if you’re forced to choose between SelectQuote, or what is called a “captive” agent, such as you get with Primerica life insurance, Select Quote will most often be the better choice.

Select Quote does not charge policy fees

SelectQuote Life Insurance does not charge a fee for the service offered. However, neither does TermLife2Go. In fact, none of the top life insurance agencies that we know of do not charge a fee. Any and all income earned as an agency is generated solely by placing life insurance policies. The carrier pays a commission to the agency and charges any associated fees.

Suze Orman endorses Select Quote

Another potential positive of SelectQuote.com is that finance guru, Suze Orman, endorses them.

Now you may ask yourself, why does Suze Orman recommend SelectQuote? We suspect it’s for two reasons:

  1. SelectQuote is a great company, and
  2. SelectQuote pays her to recommend them.

Select Quote picked a winner in Suze Orman. Suze Orman is a huge advocate of term life insurance vs whole life. However, there are times when whole life insurance is superior to term.

Which brings up an important point, SelectQuote promotes the "buy term and invest the difference" philosophy.

Buy term and invest the rest

While term life insurance rates are typically lower than permanent life insurance, there are definitely reasons to consider cash value life insurance over term life.

However, SelectQuote does not provide good permanent life insurance options. The company is more concerned with quick and easy term life.

Which is fine. But what if your situation requires a different policy? Will your agent have that conversation with you or even know to bring it up?

Ok… So that seems like a con to Select Quote, rather than a pro. Are there any other negatives to working with SelectQuote?

Select Quote Cons

Select Quote is a fantastic company that really helped pave the way for smaller, more streamlined agencies. Having said that, let's take a moment to see if there are any cons to choosing Select Quote that really stand out.

Your advice is only as good as the agent offering it

So we have no doubt Select Quote agents are well trained. In fact, we know that in order to be a sales agent, you have to pass a sales screening test, the life insurance test, and then survive training.

But the thing is, Select Quote has a lot of agents. There are probably around 10-15 that are really good. But in an environment like a call center, being "good" is dependent on meeting the criteria that the agency focuses on, such as lead conversion and other "salesy" things like that.

So you may talk with an agent who is excellent at developing "sales rapport" with you, but are they really knowledgeable about life insurance? Or are they just really good at selling?

At TermLife2Go, we want to offer our clients the best life insurance policy based on what each client's specific need and goal is. That is why we work so hard to train our agents and make sure that, not only are they up to date on the latest underwriting trends, they are also experts on many of the new "no medical exam" life insurance options and permanent life insurance options.

Because at TermLife2Go, we don't believe that "buy term and invest the difference" is sound financial advice for everyone, everywhere. Rather, we try and take each client as an individual and do our best to recommend the right product, be it fully underwritten, no exam, final expense, whole life, universal life, etc.

Select Quote complaints

If you type in "select quote complaints" the first two results as of writing this review of Select Quote are going to be SelectQuote competitor sites that are looking to capitalize on that search term. But these competitors of SQ, much like us, have a conflict of interest, because the goal is to get you to to use them and not Select Quote. So we really cannot take what they say too seriously.

From there, we scroll down our results and we get Select Quote's BBB rating. Select Quote has an A+ BBB rating with 16 customer complaints. Since the company probably writes close to 2,500 term life insurance policies a month, I'd say they are doing good in the complaints department with only 16 complaints on the BBB.

Yelp, on the other hand, is another story. Select Quote's Yelp review is 2 stars out of 5, with currently 46 reviews showing up. Currently, the most helpful review with 19 upvotes is one that claims in part:

Their [SelectQuote] advertising seems to imply that they will give you quick, online quotes. Nope. All that is a ruse to get you on a calling list so that the can crank you through their selling machine.

So BBB's review of SelectQuote complaints is looking good but Yelp's SelectQuote complaints, not so much.

Is there a takeaway? If there is, it is probably this.

When you write 2,500 monthly applications you are bound to upset people. I mean, you can't please everyone, right?

But overall it would appear that those who actually get Select Quote life insurance are pleased with the company.

Select Quote reviews on TrustPilot

You see, you don't have to go much further than looking at Select Quote reviews on TrustPilot. Select Quote uses TrustPilot, a third party testimonial service. TrustPilot rates SelectQuote Insurance Services an 8.6 out of 10 rating, which is pretty stellar in our book.

So our advice would be to trust actual clients rather than people on Yelp who simply have an axe to grind or Select Quote's competitors who want your business.

No Exam Term Life Insurance

One con of SelectQuote Insurance we did find is that SelectQuote didn’t seem to focus on what we feel is the new trend in the life insurance industry, mainly innovative life insurance underwriting policies.

Now aside from the fact that these “No paramedical exam” options can really speed up the process of getting insured (coverage in hours vs days), there are also many other reasons to consider a no medical exam term life insurance policy.

So you may ask,

Why isn't SelectQuote focusing more on no medical exam life insurance?

Which is a great question, and to be honest with you, they are probably going to be doing so shortly. The problem is, like with any large organization, change is difficult.

Change is difficult in large organizations

SelectQuote typically employs around 70-100 life insurance agents, which means, if they want to suddenly offer a new product, that product is going to have to….

  1. Be mastered by their training department.
  2. Be mastered by all their sales managers.
  3. Be mastered by over 70 different agents.

Not an easy task when you’re talking about dozens of new products each year!

At TermLife2Go, this process is simplified simply because of our size!  We’re not trying to train over 100 agents each and every month and we don’t need to insure 1000’s of people each and every month to be successful.

We’re just a small agency trying to do the best for our clients.

Is Select Quote a Scam?

A popular question people ask will be "is Select Quote a scam?"The short answer is no. The long answer is as follows.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again, SelectQuote Insurance is a great company, which is why TermLife2Go was designed to operate like a miniature SelectQuote on quite a few levels, with just a few exceptions.

Exceptions that don’t necessarily reflect negatively on SelectQuote, but rather simply make TermLife2Go a better option for many. So rather than go the route of listing SelectQuote's weaknesses, we would choose to focus on TermLife2Go's strengths.

What sets TermLife2Go apart

Now, is it necessary to shop dozens of different insurance companies?

Let’s just say you don’t fit into the "general" life insurance commercial you’ll hear on the TV… You know the one, it goes something like this…

Meet Jim. Jim was able to find a $250,000, 10 year term life insurance policy for less than $17 a month..

Well guess what, “Jim” in the sample probably isn’t a:

Jim also probably:

  • Doesn’t smoke cigars or use chewing tobacco.
  • Isn’t using electronic cigarettes or nicotine gum to help quit cigarettes.

Jim’s also not going to have:

  • A DUI’ on his record, or
  • be one of the 18.9 million Americans who have used marijuana in the past 30 days!

And herein lies the problem… While having access to over 10 different insurance companies to choose from is great, having a couple dozen is simply a better option in our opinion!

We can shop your application before we even submit it if warranted. We specialize in placing high risk life insurance where normal agents would simply run for the hills. You can review our article that focuses on how we help our clients with pre-existing conditions get life insurance.

Here is our challenge to you and we hope you accept it…
  1. Call Selectquote.com and get a quote…. And when you do so… try not to buy your life insurance on your first call.
  2. Then give us a call at TermLife2Go… And also, don’t purchase the life insurance on the first call.

Then, after speaking with both agencies, ask yourself who you feel will provide the best service for you and your family.

So what are you waiting for? Give us a call today and experience the TermLife2Go difference!

And don't forget to prepare for you exam by reading our articles on exploring what life insurance medical exams test for and 6 tips to ace your life insurance medical exam.

Thank you for reading our article, SelectQuote Review: Best Term Life Sales Agency [Pros and Cons]. Please leave any questions or comments below.

Written by
TermLife2Go
We are a team of life insurance experts with the simple mission of helping you find the best coverage for your unique situation. We research, review, and rank life insurance companies to make that process easier.