Lincoln National Corporation: Founding, Growth & Key Milestones

Arthur F. Hall was 32 years old in the summer of 1905 when he signed the charter for the Lincoln National Life Insurance Company in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Hall had been working as a traveling salesman for farm equipment before he pivoted into insurance, and he brought a salesman's instinct for the question that potential customers actually cared about: not the technical features of the policy, but what it would do for their family when something went wrong.

The early years were defined by the actuarial challenge of pricing life insurance in an era before reliable mortality tables for the American population existed. Hall hired a reinsurance actuary named Alphonso Sheridan, who built the mortality models that allowed Lincoln National to underwrite policies nationally rather than constraining the business to the Fort Wayne market. The reinsurance capabilities that Hall developed became a source of revenue alongside the primary life insurance book — other, smaller insurers paid Lincoln National to take on risk they could not underwrite themselves.

The 1918 influenza pandemic was the first existential test. Life insurance companies faced extraordinary claims during the pandemic, and many failed. Lincoln National's claims were substantial but the reinsurance structure and conservative reserves kept the company solvent. Survival through the pandemic was followed immediately by the post-World War I economic expansion, which drove strong new policy sales.

The 1999 acquisition of CIGNA's group insurance business was the most consequential expansion in the modern company's history, establishing Lincoln National as a major player in employer-sponsored group disability and dental coverage. That acquisition created the distribution infrastructure — relationships with corporate human resources departments at thousands of American employers — that now generates more than 14 million group protection plan members.