National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC)

In 1752, a generation before he would become a Founding Father of the United States, Benjamin Franklin helped establish the first successful mutual insurance company in America. For more than 250 years, mutual insurance companies have been – and still are – about people coming together to protect themselves in a common need. Because there are no stockholders in a mutual insurance company, the interests of the policyholders are served first. The idea for a national organization came in 1895 as members of the Farmers Mutual Hail Insurance Company of Iowa’s board of directors sat around a table after a meeting of their state association. It was suggested that Walter A. Rutledge, who had started Farmers Mutual Hail several years earlier, should invite mutual insurance executives from other states to consider forming a national association. That meeting, held the following year in Chicago, is considered the first organizational meeting of what was initially called the National Association of Co-Operative Mutual Insurance Companies. For more than 120 years NAMIC has been serving in the best interests of mutual insurance companies – large and small – across the United States as well as in Canada. NAMIC membership includes nearly 1,500 member companies. The association supports regional and local mutual insurance companies on main streets across America along with many of the country’s largest national insurers. NAMIC member companies write $391 billion in annual premiums and together account for 68 percent of homeowners, 56 percent of automobile, and 31 percent of the business insurance markets.