New York Life Insurance Company
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The New York Life Insurance Company was founded in 1845 as the Nautilus Insurance Company in New York City, with assets of just $17,000. It was renamed the New York Life Insurance Company in 1849. A Fortune 500 Company, it is presently the largest mutual life insurance company in the United States. The New York Life Foundation, established in 1979 with a $10 million endowment from the company, awards grants to national and local non-profit organizations throughout the nation.
The company's first headquarters were at 112-114 Broadway; the first president was James DePeyster Ogden. New headquarters were constructed in Montreal in 1888 and in New York city in 1928 (See New York Life Insurance Building). The New York building, at 51 Madison Avenue, was constructed during the presidency of Darwin P. Kingsley, who expanded the company's operations and developed new types of insurance.
As with other early insurance companies in the U.S., in its early years the company insured the lives of slaves for their owners. In response to bills passed by in California in 2001 and in Illinois in 2003, the company reported that Nautilus sold 485 slaveholder life insurance policies during a two-year period in the 1840s; they added that their trustees voted to end the sale of such policies 15 years before the Emancipation Proclamation.
The company became known for innovative business practices: in 1860, well before state laws required it, New York Life developed the non-forfeiture option, the predecessor to the guaranteed cash values of modern policies, under which a policy remains in force even if a premium payment is missed. It was also the first American life insurance company to pay a cash dividend to policyholders, and the first U.S. company to issue policies to women at the same rates as men; Susan B. Anthony was one of their first female policy holders. In 1896, New York Life became the first company to insure people with disabilities and the first to issue a policy with a disability benefit that presumes total disability to be permanent after a predetermined period.
External links
- [Direct link to New York Life's website including company history]
- [Life Insurance in the United States through World War I]
- [USA Today story on Insuring Slaves]
- [Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation, Division of Insurance, Slavery Era Policies Report August 2004]
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