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Sproutt Life Insurance Review

Sproutt Life Insurance Review
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In this Sproutt Insurance review, you’ll learn how the company aims to solve a common problem in the life insurance buying process and whether it’s the right life insurance provider for you. 

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Sproutt uses technology to provide an easy and fast life insurance buying experience for young, healthy individuals. If you're older or have a health history that makes it more difficult to purchase insurance, Sproutt has knowledgeable advisors who are not paid on commission to help you find the right policy for your needs.

Pros:
  • No-exam life insurance is available.
  • Excellent user experience.
  • Access to human advisors (if necessary).
Cons:
  • Some competitors offer access to more carriers.
  • Recommendation engine provides limited quote options.

9 Things to Know About Sproutt

  1. Sproutt is a broker. Their goal is to match you — ideally, through the use of their “Quality of Life Index” assessment — to the right life insurance company. When this assessment isn’t able to match you with the right company, they have licensed insurance advisors available to assist. 
  2. You complete this health assessment (which takes approximately 5-10 minutes) before obtaining your initial quote. This is different from many online comparison sites, which only ask very basic questions — like your date of birth, sex and smoking status — to provide initial rates.
  3. A high Quality of Life Index score (which correlates with good health) doesn’t automatically qualify you for a lower rate with the insurance company. The QL Index is Sproutt’s proprietary algorithm and is not used by the insurers they work with. So while getting a high score generally means being able to find a lower-priced policy, that isn’t guaranteed.
  4. The vast majority of policies sold on Sproutt are for term life insurance. In fact, it’s the only type of insurance you’re offered during their quoting process. This is the cheaper type of life insurance, and the one that’s right for most people.
  5. They sell policies that don’t require a medical exam, as well as policies that do. Policies that require medical underwriting are, in the majority of cases, less expensive for healthy individuals. If you’re willing to wait four to six weeks, my recommendation for healthy individuals is purchasing a policy that has a medical exam. 
  6. Policies can be purchased online or through a human adviser
  7. While they target young and healthy adults, Sproutt can work with all demographics and situations. Complicated scenarios usually have to go through a human adviser, however. 
  8. Sproutt’s recommendation engine, which suggests to you at first a quote from only one insurer, bases their decision on more variables than price. Medical exam requirements, the ability to complete the process online, and the likelihood of being approved given your health history are other variables taken into account. On the quote page, we suggest clicking “See More Options” to review quotes from all carriers. In our testing, the recommendation engine suggested a policy that was $29.03 more expensive a month because there was no medical exam.
  9. You’ll pay the same price using Sproutt as you would going directly to the insurance company. Insurance companies never want to alienate their sales force, so they offer the same rates whether you’re going through a broker or going direct. 

How Sproutt Is Trying to Fix The Broken Life Insurance Buying Process

Many consumers get paired with the wrong life insurance company.

Here’s a very common scenario:

  1. You go to a quote comparison site, enter a few basic details about yourself, and get a list of estimated rates from different companies.
  2. You scroll through the list of prices, see which company offers the lowest rate, then go through the application process with that company.
  3. The application process often takes four to six weeks, involves filling out pages of forms, requires a manual review of your health history, and usually entails a medical exam.
  4. Weeks go by, and then you finally hear back from the company. Unfortunately, that low rate you were teased with has gone up by 20% because of something they found in your application.
  5. So, while this company once offered you the lowest rate, you can no longer be sure that’s the case.

Your options are to:

  1. Just buy the policy. After all, you’ve already come this far along in the process.
  2. Start the process over with a new company, hoping that they accept the medicals you completed for the first application.

In my experience selling life insurance, this isn’t a problem for healthy people who have a clean medical history. If you’re young and have no alarming medical issues, the rate you get from a comparison site is often the rate you’ll actually end up paying.

However, it becomes a problem for those who may have health issues that raise red flags for a life insurance company.

Sometimes these health issues are minor. I once had a situation where an applicant mentioned that they had one victory cigar a year earlier (after winning their softball championship game). We went through the entire underwriting process assuming that the insurer would classify the applicant as a non-smoker.

I’m sure you can see where this is going. Weeks went by and we waited. When we finally heard back from the company, the applicant had been classified as a smoker and was therefore quoted a (much) higher rate than we expected.

So, as the agent, I had to go back to the other companies I worked with to find one that wouldn’t price gouge my client for smoking one cigar. I eventually found one, but this added a couple of weeks to the already lengthy process.

How Is Sproutt Making Life Insurance Easier?

It’s easy to get a list of prices from multiple insurers. But how are you supposed to know which one will offer the lowest price at the end of the underwriting process?

One person simply cannot crunch all the variables.

Even as someone with a decade of experience selling life insurance, I only had a slightly better idea of which company was best for a specific type of person. When you factor in individual health history, there are just too many variables involved.

Sproutt’s goal is to solve that problem with software. They use both data you provide and third-party information to map your characteristics and match you with the right insurance policy from the right company.

So, say you’re a very casual smoker, have prediabetes, and have a family history of heart disease. 

Sproutt’s goal is to match you with the right insurance company — the one that’s going to provide you with the best rate and coverage after the application process (where you’ll have to reveal these details).

For those who may have had an issue or two in the past, their process can potentially save you hours of time (as well as money).

What Does Sproutt’s Quote Process Look Like?

Sproutt’s quoting process changes based on your answers to a quick initial questionnaire that took me less than five minutes to complete.

Here’s what it looks like at the end of that process:

Sproutt cov erage options.

If you click on “See additional options that might require a medical exam,” you get additional (and often cheaper) rates:

Sproutt Medical Exam Quotes

If necessary, you can customize your policy term and coverage amount. 

Sproutt Policy Customizations.

Once you click “Select,” you’ll see the details of the provider:

Sproutt policy recommendation.

One thing that confused me about that process is that when I went to the recommendation page and selected “see more quotes,” the second quote was actually a much cheaper policy (as shown in the screenshot below). 

Sproutt quote comparisons.

Obviously, this is much different than most rate search engines, which put the lowest quote on top. In my case, the reasoning was that the more expensive quote required no medical exam, while the cheaper one did require an exam.

(My preference would be to get a medical examination and save money.)

While speaking with Sproutt representatives, I learned that they do offer other types of insurance beyond term policies. However, they noted that they recognize that term life insurance is the right choice for the majority of buyers. Plus, Sproutt’s agents are only paid based on the policy sold, not the premium amount. 

These two factors mean that unlike traditional life insurance agents, there’s no financial incentive for them to try and push you into a more expensive type of coverage.

Next up for me was taking an additional 10-question test, where I had to answer questions such as:

  • “Are you an adrenaline junkie? Tell us which activities you plan on doing.” (Scuba diving and piloting are among the options.)

You’ve also have to tell Sproutt about your:

  • Traffic violations
  • Felony convictions
  • Basic health history
  • And more
Sproutt screening questions.

It’s here, and upon choosing a no-medical exam life insurance policy, that I could actually purchase and put in-force my life insurance policy — a process that took about 20 minutes from start to finish. 

If I didn’t qualify for a no-medical-exam policy, or if I wanted to get a medical exam (to try and obtain a lower rate), it’s here where I’d then get assigned an adviser who would be my point of contact for the rest of the process.

Alternatives to Sproutt

As discussed in our life insurance buyer’s guide, one of the biggest decisions you need to make when purchasing life insurance today is whether you want to get a medical exam as part of the process. 

More often than not, going through a medical exam can save you money. This is why I recommend that healthy individuals get a quote from a company that requires medical underwriting and one that doesn’t.

As an independent broker, Sprout does contract with a large number of carriers. So, if you’re getting a quote from a small, local insurance broker with a limited number of companies they work with, a lot of the rates will be the same that Sproutt offers. 

However, here are a few other interesting companies that may be able to offer either a policy that better fits your needs or a lower rate. 

  • Policygenius. Has a larger number of carriers they work with, as well as policy types they can offer. Good option for those who need a short term limit (five years) or a higher coverage amount (as their maximum is $10 million in coverage). Learn more in our Policygenius review.
  • Bestow. Offers only no-medical-exam life insurance coverage, with an extremely efficient and fast buying process. If you’re a healthy individual, it’s worth checking your rates with Bestow and comparing them to what’s provided at Sproutt. Learn more in our Bestow review.

Is Sproutt Insurance Right For You?

Sproutt’s unique approach to assessing your situation before sending you quotes for life insurance coverage has the potential to help a lot of people save time and money — especially those who don’t have an ultra-clean medical history. 

This is noteworthy, because many of the other options in the life insurance provider marketplace are specifically oriented towards offering the best price possible to the healthiest people they can find.

Even if you’re the type of person who has a clean medical history, the range of insurance carriers Sproutt works with is comparable to the largest comparison sites. Paired with a smooth online customer experience, it’s a portal worth checking out before deciding on a policy.

Visit Sproutt.com

R.J. Weiss
R.J. Weiss, founder of The Ways To Wealth, has been a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ since 2010. Holding a B.A. in finance and having completed the CFP® certification curriculum at The American College, R.J. combines formal education with a deep commitment to providing unbiased financial insights. Recognized as a trusted authority in the financial realm, his expertise is highlighted in major publications like Business Insider, New York Times, and Forbes.

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