Subsidiary | |
Industry | Health Insurance |
Founded | 1879 |
Headquarters | Chicago, Illinois, USA |
Products | Medigap Policies, Long Term Care Insurance, Home Health Care Insurance, Short Term Care Insurance, Life Insurance, and Annuities |
Parent | CNO Financial Group |
Website | www |
Established in 1879 in Chicago, Bankers Life is the primary subsidiary of CNO Financial Group, Inc. (itself formerly Conseco, Inc until 2010). CNO is a Fortune 1000 company (rank of 548 in 2015) whose subsidiaries provide insurance products and services to customers in the United States. The core retail market served by Bankers Life is the pre-retirement and retirement aged individual and their families whose annual household income is between $25,000 and $75,000.
Bankers Life has 1.4 million policyholders and offers a variety of insurance products including long-term care and life insurance, annuities, Medicare products including supplement plans, Medicare Advantage Plans and Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage and critical illness/specified disease insurance.
Bankers Life also offers vision and dental plans through a partnership with Humana.
Bankers Life sells its products through a network of over 5,000 insurance agents based in over 320 nationwide offices.
Bankers Life's predecessor, the Hotel Men's Mutual Benefit Association, began operations on January 17, 1879.
John D. MacArthur bought Bankers Life in 1935, and continued to develop it until his death in 1978. After studying how large American manufacturers branded and mass-marketed household goods and services, MacArthur lead Bankers Life in reducing the cost of selling insurance and in making insurance coverage more affordable for middle-income Americans. By 1956 Bankers Life was one of the largest individual health and accident insurance companies in the U.S. The needs of America's growing senior market became Banker Life's focus once President Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law. Bankers Life became one of the first insurers to develop and offer Medicare supplement insurance. Upon his death, control of the company passed to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a major charitable institution in the U.S. The foundation later sold Bankers Life.