2026 Best's Rankings: US Life/Health Industry Had a Pretax Investment Return of 4.5% in 2025
OLDWICK, N.J. //BestWire// - Total investment returns for the U.S. life/health industry increased 4.5% in 2025 on a pretax basis, according to a new Best's Rankings report.
The return for last year was the highest since 2021, which saw pretax investment returns reach 5.1%, according to the report. That year was the high-water mark for pretax investment returns going back to 2016, according to the report.
The top 100 insurers saw returns of 4.51% in 2025, while the top 25 carriers recorded a slightly smaller set of returns at 4.31%, according to the report. The top five carriers were unchanged from the rankings for the prior year.
Prudential of America Group remained in the top spot for 2025, with total pretax return of 3.6% on its $606.33 billion in admitted assets, according to the report.
Filling out the top five were: No. 2 New York Life Group, with a 4.6% return on admitted assets of $479.82 billion; third-place MetLife Life Insurance Cos., 4.3% and $430.43 billion; No. 4 Massachusetts Mutual Life Group, 4.3% and $422.97 billion; and fifth-place Northwestern Mutual Group, 4.5% and $399.15 billion, according to the report.
Equitable Life Group and Ameriprise Financial Group posted the only negative returns among the top 25, at -2.6% and -2%, respectively. Equitable had admitted assets of $290.84 billion, while Ameriprise had $130.53 billion, according to the report.
Subscribers can access the report and data here.
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AM Best data sourced from Best's Financial Suite, US.
(By Terrence Dopp, senior associate editor, Best’s Review: Terry.Dopp@ambest.com)