New York Life Insurance Company
company
New York Life Insurance Company (NYLIC), most commonly known as New York Life, is the second-largest life insurance company and the largest mutual life insurance company in the United States, and is ranked #69 on the 2025 Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. corporations by total revenue. In 2025, NYLIC achieved the best possible ratings by the four independent rating companies (Standard & Poor's, AM Best, Moody's and Fitch Ratings). Other New York Life affiliates provide an array of securities products and services, as well as institutional and retail mutual funds.
History
Early history
New York Life Insurance Company first opened in Manhattan's Financial District as Nautilus Mutual Life in 1841, 10 years after the first life insurance charter was granted in the United States. Originally chartered in 1841, the company also sold fire and marine insurance. The company's first president, James De Peyster Ogden, was appointed in 1845. Nautilus renamed itself New York Life Insurance Company in 1845 to concentrate on its life insurance business.
In its early years (1846–1848) the company, along with other insurance companies of the day including Aetna and US Life, insured the lives of slaves for their owners. By 1847 these accounted for one‑third of New York Life's policies. The board of trustees voted to end the sale of insurance policies on slaves in 1848.
“New York Life Insurance Company” enters the record as company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what York, Life and Insurance can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1039380. VIAF identifies the subject as 123874234. The Library of Congress control number is n89612127. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2025, 1841, 1845 and 1846.
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This entry incorporates text from “New York Life Insurance Company” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.