When it comes to buying life insurance, would you rather buy from a company that shares its profits with policyholders or with stockholders?

Amica Mutual and USAA are two companies in the auto and home insurance arena that share their profits with policyholders. You can receive a rebate of sorts if they over-collected premiums during the year.

Forbes recently ran a glowing story about mutual life insurance companies. The mutual life insurers are cooperatives similar to Amica and USAA (and to a credit union) that you as a policyholder own.

Three mutual insurers won particular praise in the article -- Northwestern Mutual, Mass Mutual and New York Life. Each one is owned by the policyholders and has an A++ rating from AM Best.

Remember, everything the mutuals do is designed for you the customer; their profits flow back to you instead of stockholders.

The Forbes report was particularly noteworthy because they're known to have a strong anti-coop bias. So you can believe them on this issue! In fact, the stockholder-owned life insurance companies got low marks in the article.