There are two separate corporate chains behind Zurich-branded U.S. life insurance, and yours is probably the one that left Zurich more than twenty years ago. In September 2003 Zurich sold its Zurich Life retail life operation, including Federal Kemper Life Assurance Company, to Bank One. Bank One merged into JPMorgan Chase in July 2004 and the unit was rebranded Chase Insurance Group. On July 3, 2006, Protective Life Corporation completed its acquisition of the Chase Insurance Group companies for approximately $1.165 billion. If you bought individual term coverage under a Zurich or Kemper name in the 1990s or early 2000s, that is almost certainly the path your contract took, and Protective is who answers the phone.
The other chain stayed with Zurich. Kemper Investors Life Insurance Company, incorporated in Illinois and founded in 1947, was retained when the retail business was sold and was later renamed Zurich American Life Insurance Company. It carries NAIC company code 90557, is domiciled in Illinois, and today concentrates on employer-sponsored coverage while administering legacy individual business in runoff.
Sorting out which entity is on your cover page is not busywork. It determines where the in-force illustration request goes, which regulator has jurisdiction, and how long the process takes. Do it before anything else, and only then turn to the question that actually decides value: whether the conversion right is still open.
In This Article
- Which Company Issued Your Contract
- A Transfer Does Not Change What Your Contract Promises
- Term Value Lives or Dies on the Conversion Provision
- How a Buyer Would Price a Converted Legacy Term Policy
- The Fact Patterns Where the Answer Is Simply No
- Illinois Domicile, Your State’s Statute, and Verifying Anyone Who Calls
- Frequently Asked Questions
Which Company Issued Your Contract
Look at the first page of the policy, the one with the policy number, insured, face amount, and issue date. The issuing company name is printed there, and it is the only name that matters for legal purposes. Marketing names on brochures and premium notices come and go; the issuing entity does not.
Names that indicate the retail chain now with Protective Life include Federal Kemper Life Assurance Company and Zurich Life Insurance Company of America, along with the Chase Insurance and Zurich Life branding used between 2003 and 2006. Those blocks were part of the business Zurich sold to Bank One, and they moved to Protective Life in 2006.
Names that indicate the retained Zurich chain include Kemper Investors Life Insurance Company, its later name Zurich American Life Insurance Company, and Zurich American Life Insurance Company of New York for New York-issued business. Kemper Investors historically wrote variable annuity, variable life, and corporate-owned and bank-owned life insurance business, so an individual level term contract is less likely, though not impossible, to sit here.
The reliable tiebreaker is numeric. Every licensed insurer has an NAIC company code, printed on the policy jacket or available in the annual statement. Zurich American Life Insurance Company is 90557. Enter your code in the NAIC Consumer Information Source and it will return the current legal entity, its state of domicile, and its complaint history. That takes five minutes and prevents a month of misdirected correspondence. If you are unsure which page carries these details, this walkthrough of the cover page shows exactly what to look for.
One more piece of history worth knowing, because it explains the name confusion: Zurich acquired Kemper in early 1996 through a partnership with Insurance Partners L.P., which is how a Chicago-area insurer founded in the 1940s ended up with a Swiss parent and a series of overlapping brand names across three decades.
A Transfer Does Not Change What Your Contract Promises
People receiving a letter from a company they never chose reasonably worry that the terms changed. They did not. Guaranteed premiums, the level term period, the conversion provision, reinstatement rights, the grace period, and the incontestability clause are contractual obligations that transfer with the block, whether the transfer happened by outright acquisition of the issuing company or by assumption reinsurance approved by regulators.
What does change is administration, and the practical consequences are worth anticipating. Legacy blocks are often serviced on older systems with narrower staffing, so document requests take longer than they would at an active carrier. Correspondence may arrive under a name not printed anywhere on your policy. Online portals may not carry the older contracts at all. None of this affects your rights; all of it affects your timeline.
Two habits protect you. First, put every substantive request in writing and keep a copy, including the date sent. Verbal answers about conversion deadlines are not something to rely on, and this is exactly the area where a wrong answer is expensive. Second, verify any unfamiliar letter before responding to it. Use the NAIC code, not a phone number printed in the letter itself.
The general version of this problem is covered on our pages about who owns your policy after a merger and what a transfer notice actually means. Neither transaction described above required your consent, and neither reduced what you are owed.
Term Value Lives or Dies on the Conversion Provision
A settlement buyer purchases a future death benefit. Level term coverage that will simply end while the insured is living produces no death benefit and therefore no purchase price. The only mechanism that changes this is a conversion privilege, which lets the contract become permanent coverage that pays whenever death occurs.
Find the provision. It is usually a rider or contract section headed Conversion Privilege, Right to Convert, or Exchange Option, and it will state a last conversion date as a policy anniversary, an attained age, or the earlier of the two. On the term chassis written in the 1990s and early 2000s, that date commonly arrives well before the level premium period ends. A 20-year policy is not necessarily convertible for twenty years.
Three questions have to be answered in writing by the servicing carrier:
- The last conversion date, expressed as a calendar date. Not a formula, not a general statement about the product line.
- Whether evidence of insurability is required. A genuine conversion right requires none. If health evidence is required, the right is worthless to an impaired insured and buyers treat it as nonexistent.
- What the contract converts into, and at what premium. Ask for the specific permanent plans available today and the annual premium at the insured’s current attained age for the full face amount. On a legacy block administered in runoff, the answer is often a single designated plan, and its pricing may be unattractive.
If you want the mechanics in plain language before reading your own contract, see what a conversion rider actually gives you.
| Name on the cover page | Where the block went | Who to contact in 2026 | Primary regulator |
|---|---|---|---|
| Federal Kemper Life Assurance Company | Zurich to Bank One 2003, to JPMorgan Chase 2004, to Protective Life 2006 | Protective Life policyholder service | Tennessee, plus your own state |
| Zurich Life Insurance Company of America | Same 2003 to 2006 chain | Protective Life policyholder service | Tennessee, plus your own state |
| Kemper Investors Life Insurance Company | Retained by Zurich, later renamed | Zurich American Life Insurance Company | Illinois Department of Insurance |
| Zurich American Life Insurance Company | Retained by Zurich, NAIC code 90557 | Zurich American Life Insurance Company | Illinois Department of Insurance |
| Zurich American Life Insurance Company of New York | New York-licensed member of the retained group | That company’s service address | New York State Department of Financial Services |
How a Buyer Would Price a Converted Legacy Term Policy
Assume the window is open. Nothing about the offer is a percentage of face value; it is a discounted cash flow with four inputs, and one of them dominates.
Life expectancy. Two independent medical underwriting firms review the insured’s records and produce mortality estimates expressed in months, usually with a multiplier against a standard mortality table. Everything else is arithmetic around this number.
Projected premium outlay. The buyer must fund the converted permanent policy from closing until the death benefit is paid. Conversion products are priced knowing that converters are a self-selected group in worse health than new applicants, so the premium is high. On legacy blocks the designated conversion plan may carry guaranteed maximum charges that make the carrying cost worse still.
Face amount. Two life expectancy reports, legal review, escrow, and ongoing policy tracking are near-fixed costs. Most institutional buyers begin at $100,000 of death benefit and many set the bar higher. Our page on the practical minimum policy size covers where the floor actually sits.
Carrier friction. Buyers price in how long a company takes to process an ownership change and how it handles conversions, because a portfolio holder bears that cost repeatedly.
Put numbers on it. An insured with a twelve-year life expectancy holding a policy that converts into permanent coverage costing $14,000 a year represents roughly $168,000 of premium against a $300,000 death benefit, before the buyer’s required return. That file does not clear. The same policy on an insured with a four-year life expectancy is straightforward. Health, not face amount, decides.
The Fact Patterns Where the Answer Is Simply No
Four situations end the analysis, and hearing them early saves months.
The conversion deadline has passed. An unconvertible term policy has essentially no market value regardless of face amount or health, because there is no permanent death benefit for anyone to acquire.
Conversion requires evidence of insurability and the insured is impaired. The right exists on paper and cannot be exercised.
The insured is healthy and under 65. The life expectancy is too long for premium funding to work. That is good news about the person.
The contract is inside the two-year contestability period. Buyers will not accept the risk that the carrier could rescind for a material misstatement on the application.
When one of these applies, the productive question changes shape. Partial conversion is the option most owners never consider and it is frequently the best available move: converting $100,000 of a $400,000 policy and letting the balance expire preserves a death benefit that will actually be paid, at a premium a fixed income can absorb. Check also for accelerated death benefit or chronic illness riders, which pay while the insured is living and have nothing to do with selling. And if a premium was missed recently, confirm grace period and reinstatement status in writing before assuming the coverage is gone. The head-to-head comparison of converting versus selling sets out both paths with the numbers visible.
Pine Lake Life Solutions provides a free policy review. Send the policy cover page and any transfer or assumption notice you received, and you will get a plain reading of which company holds the contract, whether the conversion right is live, and whether a realistic secondary market path exists, including the cases where it does not.
Illinois Domicile, Your State’s Statute, and Verifying Anyone Who Calls
Different regulators govern different questions, and conflating them is a common source of wasted effort.
The insurer. Zurich American Life Insurance Company is an Illinois-domiciled insurer, which places solvency, reserves, policy form approval, and market conduct oversight with the Illinois Department of Insurance. If your contract instead moved to Protective Life Insurance Company, the relevant domiciliary regulator is Tennessee, where Protective Life Insurance Company is domiciled, and the group is headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. Complaints can also be filed with your own state’s insurance department, which will coordinate with the domiciliary regulator.
The transaction. A life settlement is governed by the law of the state where the policy owner resides. Most states license providers and brokers under statutes derived from the NAIC Viatical Settlements Model Act or the NCOIL Life Settlements Model Act. Common requirements include written disclosure of the alternatives to a sale, prescribed contract forms, anti-fraud provisions, and a rescission window after funding, frequently fifteen days but set state by state. Illinois regulates viatical and life settlement activity through its Department of Insurance and licenses the participants.
Verification. Ask any provider or broker for their license number in your state and check it against the department’s public lookup before you sign a HIPAA authorization or release a single medical record. Unsolicited contact about a policy you have not shopped deserves particular scrutiny; legitimate licensees give the number immediately and in writing.
If the household also holds permanent coverage under one of these names, the analysis is different, and our page on Zurich American whole life contracts covers it. For the carrier-neutral question, see whether term life can be sold at all.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is Protective Life servicing a policy I bought from Zurich?
Because the retail block changed hands twice. Zurich sold its Zurich Life retail operation, including Federal Kemper Life Assurance, to Bank One in September 2003. Bank One merged into JPMorgan Chase in 2004, and Protective Life completed its purchase of the resulting Chase Insurance Group companies on July 3, 2006 for roughly $1.165 billion. Your contract terms did not change.
Is Zurich American Life Insurance Company still in business?
Yes. It is the Illinois-domiciled company formerly named Kemper Investors Life Insurance Company, founded in 1947 and retained by Zurich when the retail life business was sold. It carries NAIC company code 90557. Its current focus is employer-sponsored coverage, with legacy individual business administered in runoff. A separate New York-licensed member serves New York-issued contracts.
Did any of these transfers change my premium or conversion rights?
No. Guaranteed premiums, the level term period, conversion provisions, grace period, reinstatement rights, and the incontestability clause all transfer with the block and remain enforceable. If your premium changed, the usual explanation is reaching the end of the level premium period and entering annually renewable rates, not the ownership change. Ask for the reason in writing.
How do I confirm which company actually holds my contract?
Use the NAIC company code printed on the policy jacket or in the annual statement and look it up in the NAIC Consumer Information Source. It returns the current legal entity, its state of domicile, and its complaint history. That is more reliable than the name on a premium notice, which reflects whoever administers the block rather than who is contractually obligated.
What if the conversion window closed years ago?
Then the policy has essentially no secondary market value, because there is no permanent death benefit for a buyer to acquire. The useful work shifts to what happens at the end of the level period, whether any accelerated death benefit or chronic illness rider exists, and whether a smaller replacement policy is obtainable at an acceptable cost given current health.
Should I stop paying premiums while I look into this?
No. A lapse destroys whatever value exists and cannot always be undone. If cash flow is the pressure, ask the carrier in writing about grace period status, reinstatement rights, and whether the face amount can be reduced to lower the premium. Keep the contract in force while you gather documents, then decide with the actual numbers in front of you.
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Related Reading
- Sell My Zurich American Whole Life Policy
- Carrier Merged Who Owns Policy
- Your Policy Was Sold To Another Carrier
- What Is A Term Conversion Rider
- Life Settlement Vs Term Conversion
- Can I Sell A Term Life Insurance Policy
- Minimum Policy Size For A Life Settlement
- Where To Find Your Policy Cover Page
Pine Lake Life Solutions does not purchase life insurance policies and does not provide legal, tax, or investment advice. Information provided is for educational purposes only. Eligibility for any option, including life settlements, is not guaranteed and depends on individual circumstances, policy terms, underwriting, and market conditions. Consult independent legal, tax, or financial professionals before making decisions regarding a life insurance policy.