The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America
Template:Wikify-date The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America (GLICOA) is a Fortune 300 company founded in 1860 in New York, New York. It is the fourth largest mutual life insurance company in the United States of America.
Guardian has more than 5,500 employees and more than 2,800 financial representatives, working through 13 affiliate companies and subsidiaries. Guardian has nearly three million customers who hold the company's individual life and disability income insurance and investments products (such as variable annuities, mutual funds, stocks and bonds). It also has another five million customers covered by its employee benefits, including life, health and dental insurance; pension plans; and 401(k) products. For the fiscal year 2003, the company reported $6.7 billion in sales and $37.6 billion in assets and was ranked once again as one of the top 10 most admired life and health companies in Fortune’s "America’s Most Admired Companies" list.
Mutual life insurance companies were originally organized to provide insurance-at-cost. Despite that fundamental fact, they have managed to accumulate massive profits over the years by overcharging policyowners for insurance and paying them too little in dividends.
At the beginning of the 21st century numerous mutuals such as Prudential, MetLife, and John Hancock decided to demutualize and return to policyowners all the profits earned over the years. Policyowners were awarded cash, stock and policy credits exceeding $100 billion in these demutualizations, which have been regarded as socially desirable.
Guardian Life is among the few remaining mutual life insurers that have not demutualized. As of December 31, 2005 it had accumulated $3.9 billion in profits from its policyowners under the guise of mutuality and its board of directors has staunchly refused to return that money.
Given these facts, knowledgeable policyowners decided in 2006 to organize to promote the prompt demutualization of Guardian Life. They established a website http://policyownersfordemutualization.blogspot.com showing that Guardian’s whole life policyowners would receive an estimated $13,673 per policy and its other policyowners would receive $592 per policy in a demutualization. These policyowners also established an email account Guardian Policyowners for Demutualizationwhere people can communicate a desire to encourage demutualization on Guardian Life so they can receive their rightful financial share.