The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company has announced its intentions to pay $5.2 billion in dividends to policyholders in 2017. This represents a decrease from the 2016 dividend payout of $400 million.
Breakdown of Dividends Paid to Policyholders
Northwestern reported the breakdown by product line:
- $4.4 billion to whole life policyholders. Northwestern didn't mention this specifically, but did note that 85% of the total dividend was going to whole life policy holders. This is a reduction of $400 million vs. last year.
- $360 million to disability insurance policyholders
- $165 million to term life insurance policyholders
- $110 million to variable life insurance policyholders
- $60 million to annuity policyholders
New Whole Life Dividend Interest Rate (Dividend Scale)
The whole life dividend scale for 2017 will decline to 5.00%. For 2016, it was 5.45%.
You can read the press release from Northwestern here.
I hate to see it drop. Still a good company, I’m glad I’m with Mass Mutual. I’ll bet Mass, Penn and others are happy to see this. Might give them a little edge selling their WL products.
What does Northwestern Mutuals dividend rate drop to if I have a policy loan? I have been thinking of using the cash value to invest in some other assets but I can’t find this info anywhere.
Hi Jim,
For most NML policies issued for the last several years, the dividend rate is on loaned values is 0.55% below the loan interest rate regardless of fixed or variable loan (they offer both).
Most NML policies have a loan rate of 8%. I know MassMutual is 4-5% loan rate from most policies I’ve seen.