Gilded Age expansion
After the death of Winston in March 1885, Richard McCurdy succeeded to the presidency, the same year the Company introduced deferred dividend policies. Within three years, less than 1% of the company's new business consisted of the old annual dividend policies. McCurdy, a company vice president, sent agents throughout the West and Southwest and pursued an ambitious investment approach, doubling new insurance in the first three years of his presidency. By 1904, it had quadrupled. In 1889, Mutual Life surpassed New York Life in new business, and in 1893, it bested The Equitable. In the 1880s, Mutual Life began building large office buildings and renting out excess space in addition to buying other banks' debentures.[3]
In 1886, Mutual Life established agencies in London,[8] Berlin, Hamburg, Sydney, Mexico City, and in Puerto Rico. During the following twenty years, nineteen additional agencies were established abroad. The rapid expansion was met with difficulties as Prussia prohibited the company from doing business there in 1900, and followed by Germany in 1904. By 1914, all of the company's foreign agencies were closed.[3]
During the Armstrong Investigation of 1905, which was charged by the New York State Legislature to look into fraud and abuse in the New York insurance industry, the company was a chief target and McCurdy and other executives testified before the committee.[9] The legislature placed new restrictions, including prohibiting insurance companies from holding of common stock, limiting the amount of new insurance any company could issue in a year, and prohibiting the deferred dividend policies. A visible target, McCurdy resigned in late 1905 and the company restructured from a general agency system to a managerial agency system where the general commission agents became salaried branch-office managers.[9]
Peabody and Houston years
After the "sensational insurance investigations by the Armstrong committee," McCurdy was succeeded by Charles A. Peabody Jr., a former lawyer whose father, Charles Augustus Peabody, was a founding trustee.[10] Peabody served as president until 1927 when he was succeeded by David F. Houston, the former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and Agriculture (under President Woodrow Wilson).[11] Houston ran Mutual Life until 1940. Under Peabody and Houston, Mutual Life went through another period of nearly uninterrupted growth and extended coverage to the American middle class and working class. In 1913, the Company introduced disability benefits and, in 1925, payroll deduction was introduced allowing the payment of premiums of group coverage. Between 1903 and 1930, the company's insurance tripled, from $1.5 billion to nearly $4.5 billion and assets grew from $401 million to $1.05 billion.[3]
During the Great Depression, however, the Company terminated a number of employees, service contractors, and experienced a series of policy lapses which caused a dip in assets and a decline of insurance in force. By 1931, disability income benefits connected to life insurance policies were discontinued.
World War II and post-war period
In 1940, Lewis Williams Douglas was elected president who again changed the company's investment approach which had, traditionally, been invested in low-interest, low-risk bonds. In 1944, 83% of the company's assets were invested in bonds, with less than 1% in stocks and 13% was in mortgages. By the 1950s, insurance companies began to more heavily invest in the stock market and diversified into lending. By 1959, bonds accounted for less than half of the company's assets, while stocks had grown six-fold to constitute 6% and mortgages were up to 32%. Upon being nominated by President Harry Truman as U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1947, Alexander E. Patterson was named president, serving until his death in September 1948.[12] Louis W. Dawson had active charge of operations following Paterson's death, but was not elected president until March 1950.[13]
Mutual Life reentered Alaska in 1949 and Texas shortly thereafter in 1950.[14] In 1952, the company began offering personal sickness and health policies before the strength of unions and collective bargaining units which led to the development of group coverage. In 1953, the Company developed its first group plan for small businesses, whereby it provided pension, life insurance, disability, hospital, surgical, and polio benefits.
1970s and 1980s
Prior to the 1970s, growth largely occurred from new products and services generated from within. In the 1970s, however, Mutual Life began acquiring other companies and developing new ones which rapidly added to services. In 1970, the company established an investment fund known as the MONY Fund and,[19] in 1971, it acquired North American Life and Casualty Company.[20] In February 1972, following the death of Roger Hull, Hughes served as chairman and chief executive officer. In October 1967, James S. Bingay, became president and chief executive officer while Richard I. Fricke became chairman.[21][22] In 1973, formed MONY Life of Canada, to service the Canadian market, and MONYCo., a holding company to manage its newly acquired and newly formed subsidiaries. In 1975 the Company entered the property-and-liability reinsurance business. Bingay died in 1976,[23] and was succeeded by
1990s and 2000s
In November 1990, Michael I. Roth was named president and chief operating officer of Mutual Life, succeeding Farley who continued as chairman and chief executive.[33] Roth joined MONY in 1988 as chief financial officer after leaving Primerica Corporation (formerly the American Can Company)[34] as executive vice president and chief financial officer.[33] In October 1992, Roth also became chief executive of Mutual Life.[35]
In 1998, Mutual Life was renamed Mutual of New York Insurance Company,[36] as part of its transformation into a publicly traded company. The company planned to issue 34 million shares to its 900,000 policyholders, and to sell 11.3 million other shares.[37]
Acquisition by AXA
In September 2003, AXA Financial, Inc. announced a takeover offer of $1.5 billion for MONY Group of New York,[41][42] which some of its largest shareholders, including Highfields Capital Management, Third Avenue Management, Southeastern Asset Management and Advisory Research, immediately objected to as being too low.[43] The offer was accepted by shareholders in May 2004,[44][45] and on July 8, 2004, MONY became a wholly owned subsidiaries of European insurer, allowing AXA to become "the fourth-largest seller of variable annuities in the United States and the largest seller of variable life insurance."[45]
