Founding and early history Lincoln traces its origin to June 12, 1905, in
Fort Wayne, Indiana, as the Lincoln National Life Insurance Company. Four men were initially founders of the organization, with an Attorney Daniel Ninde becoming the largest stockholder and first CFO for the company, according to Ninde family history. Daniel Ninde was educated as a Midshipman at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. He descended from a local Fort Wayne family raising a number of Circuit Court Judges. Great Uncle Harry Ninde's farm is now downtown Fort Wayne. It is believed that the four founding men all worked at Lincoln National in one way or another. They bought a smaller insurance company located in North Dakota and needed to pass a 6-month residency requirement to complete the sale. They then bought a furnished home located in that state and spent the next six months on weekends playing poker for its furnishings. Daniel Ninde's family still owns a large oriental rug he won in a card game there. Manager Perry Randall, a Fort Wayne attorney and entrepreneur, suggested the name "Lincoln," arguing that the name of
Abraham Lincoln would powerfully convey a spirit of integrity. In August, 1905
Robert Todd Lincoln provided a photograph of his father, along with a letter authorizing the use of his father's likeness and name for company stationery and advertising. In 1928, LNC president Arthur Hall hired Dr. Louis A. Warren, a Lincoln scholar, and in 1929, LNC acquired one of the largest collections of books about Abraham Lincoln in the United States. The Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne was the second largest Lincoln museum in the country. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in
Springfield, Illinois is now the world's largest museum dedicated to the life and times of Abraham Lincoln, after the closing of the Fort Wayne Lincoln Museum June 30, 2008. Ian Rolland started with Lincoln in 1956, and became president of Lincoln National Life in 1977. When Rolland retired in 1998, new president Jon A. Boscia moved LNC to Philadelphia and started using the Lincoln Financial Group name for marketing. Lincoln National Life, the largest subsidiary, and the Lincoln Museum remained in Fort Wayne.
1990–2007 Lincoln Reinsurance was the first US
reinsurance company; it was sold to
Swiss Re in 2001. K&K Insurance Specialties was the first to insure events like
NASCAR races; it was sold to
Aon in 1993.
Safeco bought American States, a property/casualty insurance business because Lincoln was primarily in life/health. However, LNC even sold a block of disability income business to
MetLife in 1999, as it narrowed its focus. Lincoln moved its headquarters from Indiana to Philadelphia in 1999. In Philadelphia Lincoln was headquartered in the West Tower of
Centre Square in
Center City. Lincoln Financial was naming rights sponsor for the
2000 Rugby League World Cup which was held in England. Lincoln Financial Group purchased the Administrative Management Group, Inc. based in Arlington Heights, Illinois in August 2002. Previously, AMG was a strategic partner of LFG for four years, providing recordkeeping services for the Lincoln Alliance product, a turnkey solution for "employer retirement and employee benefit programs, including investment choices, recordkeeping, plan design, compliance and employee retirement counseling and education." In 2007, the company moved 400 employees, including its top executives, to Radnor Township from
Philadelphia. The
Pilot Life headquarters built in the 1920s and located at 5300 High Point Road, "a careful replication of
the governor's mansion built in 1767 in
New Bern," was nominated to the
National Register of Historic Places in 2022, when Clachan Properties of
Richmond, Virginia, was buying the property to develop apartments. The 1986 merger marked the retirement of the Pilot Life brand, most notably the end of its "Sail with the Pilot" jingles, which had been heavily associated with
Atlantic Coast Conference college basketball and had been heard on television since 1958. The insurance operations would continue to be headquartered in what became the
Lincoln Financial Building. Lincoln Financial also acquired Jefferson-Pilot's television and radio operations, which were renamed
Lincoln Financial Media. Jefferson Standard Insurance put
WBTV in
Charlotte on the air on Channel 3 in 1949. At the time, Jefferson Standard Insurance also had a 16.5% interest in the Greensboro News Company, licensee of
WFMY, which signed on from Greensboro two months after WBTV. Jefferson Standard had purchased
WBT radio from CBS in 1945. Jefferson Standard Broadcasting Co. was a subsidiary of Jefferson-Pilot Corp. when in 1970 the media interests were folded into a new subsidiary, Jefferson-Pilot Communications, still owned by the insurance company. The broadcasting subsidiary acquired several other radio and television stations across the country, with WBTV serving as the company's flagship station. The group owned 18 radio stations in
Miami, Florida;
San Diego, California;
Denver, Colorado; and
Atlanta, Georgia. It also owned
WBTV, the
CBS affiliate in Charlotte;
WCSC-TV, the CBS affiliate in
Charleston, South Carolina and
WWBT, the
NBC affiliate in
Richmond, Virginia. In June 2007, the company publicly announced it would explore a sale of this division, and hired Merrill Lynch to assess its strategic options. It was announced on November 12 that
Raycom Media purchased the three TV stations, including its sports production division, which was the co-holder to football and basketball games in the
Atlantic Coast Conference with Raycom and sole rightsholders to the
Southeastern Conference until 2009, when
ESPNPlus and
CBS Sports acquired the rights. The Raycom Sports brand was merged with LFS as of January 1, 2008. Though billed as a merger of equals, the merged company carries the LNC name, operates from the LNC offices, with current LNC stockholders holding 61% of the stock, and current LNC directors controlling the new board. The insurance division is based in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Liberty Mutual Acquisition On January 19, 2018, Lincoln Financial Group announced that it entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Liberty Life Assurance Company of Boston from Liberty Mutual Insurance Group. Upon completion of the transaction, Lincoln Financial retained Liberty’s Group Benefits business and reinsured Liberty’s Individual Life and Annuity business to Protective Life Insurance Company.
Recent activity Lincoln purchased Newton County Loan and Savings in order to restructure as a
bank holding company and qualify for
Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funding. In January 2009, Lincoln sold its
Delaware Investments subsidiary to
Macquarie Group. Delaware Investments was integrated into Macquarie's global asset management arm, Macquarie Funds Group effective January 5, 2010. In December 2023, Lincoln sold its wealth management unit to
Osaic for an undisclosed amount. ==Operations==