Talcott Resolution At a Glance: Rates, Products and Reviews

About Talcott Resolution

Talcott Resolution, which functioned for a long time as a life insurance and annuity company, was originally established as part of the Hartford Life Insurance Company in 1902.

The company first began selling annuities in 1978 — with variable and fixed products — and it quickly grew into one of the giants in the industry over the next couple of decades.

It became the No. 1 seller of variable annuities in 2003, eclipsing $15 billion in sales for that type of product alone.

Over the last decade or so, however, things have tapered off. The company opted to stop selling new annuities in 2012, and it became independent from Hartford Life Insurance in 2018.

Talcott went on to be acquired by Sixth Street in 2021.

Today, the company does not sell new annuities but still maintains its existing contracts. In 2023, that included over 1 million individual contracts and $96 billion in assets under management.

Talcott Resolution is also a major factor in the reinsurance space. In 2021, it agreed to reinsure more than $20 billion in fixed index annuities from Allianz Life.

The company’s financial strength ratings are notably lower than many other major providers in the annuity space.

Credit Ratings

Credit ratings for annuity providers can help determine a company’s financial strength and stability — an indication that it will be around to guarantee payments to you in the future. Different rating companies use different scales.

Talcott Resolution’s Credit Ratings

Rating Company	Credit Rating
AM Best	B++
Fitch	A-
S&P	BBB+

What Customers Are Saying About Talcott Resolution

Keep in mind that while Talcott Resolution does not currently sell new annuities, it still has more than 1 million existing contracts and customers.

The company is absent from some industry customer satisfaction measurements, likely since it no longer sells new annuities, but its NAIC Complaint Index score can be a concern. 

It netted a 6.36, meaning that there were five times as many customer complaints against the company as expected given its market presence.

The NAIC (National Association of Insurance Commissioners) tracks consumer complaints each state’s insurance commission receives each year. These are used to compile a company’s  NAIC Complaint IndexNAIC Complaint IndexDetermined by dividing the company’s share of complaints in the U.S. market by the company’s share of premiums in the U.S. market. The National Complaint Index is always 1.00, so a score of 2.00, for example, is twice as high as expected in the market..

NAIC Complaint Index for Talcott Resolution

All Policy Types	0.39
Individual Annuities Only	6.36

These numbers indicate that Talcott Resolution receives more complaints than the industry average for individual annuities specifically.

Provider Rating Methodology

Annuity.org created a fact-based methodology to analyze the strength, security and reach of different annuity providers. We assessed companies based on their availability, the number of direct premiums sold, their AM Best Financial Strength Rating and their NAIC Complaint Index score.

Providers received a rating on a five-star scale for each of these categories, with the complaint index and financial strength ratings weighed as the heaviest variables. Then, using a weighted average, each company was assigned an overall star rating.

Top-Ranked Annuity Providers

Provider	Annuity.org Star Rating
Mass Mutual
New York Life
Pacific Life
Midland National
North American
Western & Southern

Our Rating Panel

The Annuity.org editorial team spoke with several different annuity experts to learn more about what is important to customers when searching for a provider and what factors make a company reliable. While Annuity.org designed the methodology, these experts provided feedback during the process and consulted on what factors we should leverage to best help prospective buyers compare providers.