Symetra Indexed Universal Life Lawsuit: $32.5M Settlement Class

A federal judge approved a $32.5 million class action settlement in May 2025 to resolve the Symetra life insurance lawsuit known as Davis v. Symetra Life Insurance Company, which alleged the company overcharged about 43,000 owners of legacy universal life policies by inflating monthly cost-of-insurance deductions. Symetra denied wrongdoing but agreed to pay the settlement to end the case. Eligible policyholders do not need to file a claim; payments are being distributed automatically.¹

Who the Settlement Covers

The class is limited to current and former owners of five specific universal life policy types: MasterPlan, Executive MasterPlan, MasterPlan Plus, Joint MasterPlan, and Juvenile MasterPlan Plus. To qualify, a policy must have been issued by American States Life Insurance Company, administered by Symetra or one of its predecessors, and in force on or after January 1, 2000.¹

There’s also a state requirement. The policy had to have been issued in one of eleven states: Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, or Washington.¹ These are older, legacy policies, not products Symetra currently sells. The affected block totaled roughly 43,000 policies.²

What Class Members Receive

Symetra paid $32.5 million into a non-reversionary cash fund, meaning any unclaimed money stays with the class rather than returning to the company. Payments are distributed automatically in proportion to how much each policyholder paid in cost-of-insurance charges over the life of the policy. No claim form is required. Analytics LLC is administering the settlement.³

District Judge Kymberly K. Evanson of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington granted final approval on May 19, 2025, finding the deal “fair, reasonable, and adequate.” No class members objected. Five owners opted out. The court approved attorneys’ fees of roughly $10.8 million (one-third of the fund), litigation expenses of $197,618.82, and a $25,000 service award to the named plaintiff. The case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning class members who did not opt out cannot pursue related claims separately.¹

What Symetra Was Accused of Doing

The dispute focused on cost-of-insurance charges, or COI. Under the MasterPlan-series contracts, these monthly deductions from a policy’s cash value were supposed to reflect the insured person’s age, sex, and rate class, along with the company’s expectations about future mortality. Nothing else.

Lead plaintiff Dennis E. Davis, an Iowa resident who bought an adjustable life policy in 1987 and surrendered it in October 2020, alleged that Symetra loaded its COI rates with factors the policy language did not authorize. According to the complaint filed April 20, 2021, those unauthorized inputs included administrative expenses, commissions, reinsurance costs, premium persistency assumptions, investment income, taxes, marketing costs, and profit objectives.³

The complaint claimed that for several years, Symetra’s own mortality expectations accounted for less than half of what was actually deducted from Davis’s cash value as “cost of insurance.” The remainder, plaintiffs argued, came entirely from unpermitted factors.⁴ The suit also alleged Symetra failed to lower COI rates as mortality expectations improved, which the policy language required.⁵ Symetra denied all of these allegations.

Other Symetra Lawsuits

The $32.5 million settlement covers only the legacy MasterPlan COI claims. Symetra faces other litigation that is separate from this settlement and does not distribute money to Davis class members.

Yokel: Indexed Universal Life Sales

Beth and David Yokel sued Symetra in the Greenville County Court of Common Pleas in South Carolina, along with their financial advisor Matthew Dixon and his firms Black Harbor Wealth Management and TruNorth Advisors, over the sale of a Symetra Accumulator IUL policy. The Yokels alleged Dixon used unrealistic illustrations to convince them to liquidate their IRAs and an existing universal life policy and pour $800,000 in premiums over four years into the Symetra IUL, on the promise of $50,000 to $55,000 in annual tax-free retirement income for thirty years or more.⁶

According to the complaint, the illustrations relied on an internal multiplier applied to indexed crediting rates after the third policy year, which made projected cash values look far more sustainable than they actually were. The couple said they discovered the problem in June 2023 after consulting a different advisor, and then faced a choice between funding the policy with more money or letting it lapse and losing what they had already paid. A Symetra spokeswoman declined to comment on the pending litigation.⁶

Yates: Accidental Death Benefit Denial

In Yates v. Symetra Life Insurance Company, decided February 23, 2023, the Eighth Circuit ruled against Symetra’s denial of an accidental death claim. Terri Yates’s husband died of a heroin overdose on December 20, 2016. Symetra paid the base life insurance benefit but denied the accidental death portion, citing a policy exclusion for “intentionally self-inflicted injury.”⁷

The court held that while taking heroin is intentional, the fatal overdose was not, and the exclusion could not be stretched to cover unintended injuries caused by reckless conduct. The court also held that Yates did not have to exhaust an internal appeals process because the written plan documents never mentioned one, even though Symetra’s denial letter had described the procedure. The district court’s award of $54,058.50 in attorney’s fees to Yates was affirmed.⁷

1
Justia. Davis v. Symetra Life Insurance Company, No. 2:21-cv-00533-KKE
2
ClassAction.org. $32.5M Symetra Settlement Ends Lawsuit Over Allegedly Unlawful Cost of Insurance Policy Deductions
3
ClassAction.org. Davis v. Symetra Life Insurance Company Settlement Agreement
4
Truth in Advertising. Davis v. Symetra Life Insurance Co. Complaint
5
ClassAction.org. Symetra Deducted Unlawful Amounts From Life Insurance Policies’ Cash Values, Class Action Alleges
6
InsuranceNewsNet. South Carolina Couple Sue Advisor, Symetra Over IUL-Funded Plan
7
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Yates v. Symetra Life Insurance Company, Nos. 22-1093, 22-2257