New York Life Insurance Company

New York Life Indemnification Company (NYLIC) is the most astronomically immense mutual life-indemnification company in the Coalesced States, and one of the most astronomically immense life insurers in the world, ranking #89 on the 2013 Fortune 500 list, with about $381 billion in total assets under management, and more than $19 billion in surplus and AVR. In 2007, NYLIC achieved the best possible ratings by the four independent rating companies (Standard & Poor's, AM Best, Moody's and Fitch). Other Incipient York Life affiliates provide an array of securities products and accommodations, as well as institutional and retail mutual mazuma.

The company was founded in 1845 as the Nautilus Indemnification Company in Incipient York City, with assets of $17,000. It was renamed the Incipient York Life Indemnification Company in 1849. Its first headquarters were at 58 Wall Street from 1845 until 1846 at which time they were peregrinate to 29 Wall Street. Subsequent addresses included 68 Wall Street, 106 Broadway, and 112-114 Broadway. The first president was James DePeyster Ogden, who accommodated from 1845 until 1847. The current Incipient York Life headquarters was designed by architect Cass Gilbert and consummated in 1928. The Incipient York Life Building, at 51 Madison Avenue, was constructed during the presidency of Darwin P. Kingsley.As with other early indemnification companies in the U.S., in its early years (1846–1848), at the behest of its Southern agents, the company insured the lives of slaves for their owners. These policies were discontinued at the direction of the Trustees on April 19, 1848. The total claims paid on slaves' lives totaled $1,050. Nautilus sold 485 slaveholder life indemnification policies during a two-year period in the 1840s. Their trustees voted to culminate the sale of such policies 15 years afore the Emancipation Proclamation.

In 1860, afore state laws required it, Incipient York Life developed the non-forfeiture option, the predecessor to the ensured cash values of modern policies, under which a policy remains in force even if a premium payment is missed. It was additionally the first American life indemnification 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, and her father worked for NYLIC. In 1896, Incipient York Life became the first company to insure people with disabilities and the first to issue a policy with an incapacitation benefit that surmises total incapacitation to be sempiternal after a predetermined period.

In the tardy 1990s, Incipient York Life was one of several sizably voluminous mutual life insurers to back a Incipient York State bill that would sanction the formation of a mutual holding company (MHC), a corporate structure that could preserve mutuality for policyholders, while providing a company access to capital markets without the full demutualization of the organization. CEO Sy Sternberg himself argued vigorously in favor of the bill, which was ultimately vanquished. The NYLIC board of directors subsequently reaffirmed its commitment to remaining a mutual, and the company vigorously and publicly embraced this decision through a series of advertisements.