National Life and Accident Insurance Company
 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (February 2018) |
The National Life and Accident Insurance Company was a life insurance company based in Nashville, Tennessee.
National Life and Accident began in 1900 as the National Sick and Accident Association, a mutual company. It was reorganized as a stock company and adopted the National Life name shortly thereafter. It was purchased by American General Corporation in 1982.
The motto of National Life & Accident was "We Shield Millions". The radio station call letters "WSM," seen on the microphones of the Grand Ole Opry, reflected the motto of National Life; the insurance company owned the radio station and the Opry until the 1980s.
"Sick and accident" policies
In December 1901, the National Sick and Accident Association was sold to C. A. Craig to settle an estate. By 1902, the company was nearly insolvent.
Industrial life and accidental death and dismemberment insurance
The company soon expanded into "industrial life insurance," so named because it was generally aimed at industrial workers, which was also sold on the debit system, and accidental death and dismemberment insurance, which rather than a weekly income paid a stated, fixed amount, if the insured died by accident or lost sight or use of an eye or a limb. The industrial life insurance plans were usually for small face amounts: typically $250, $500, or $1,000 in the early years. They featured
Expansion
The company gradually expanded its operations to the south-
Its greatest marketing development was the beginning of
Evolution and takeover
U.S. life insurers faced a crisis with the coming of the Great Depression in 1929. Like many of them, National Life survived by offering its clients policy loans against the plans' cash values. With World War II came another crisis due to the manpower shortage brought about by conscription. In some areas, premium collections, at least on a weekly basis, had to be curtailed (gasoline rationing was a factor) and many clients who were used to having their premiums collected in person by an agent found themselves having to take the initiative to mail in their premiums or lose their coverage.
By the mid-1960s the company had outgrown its home office in downtown Nashville. It had also been overshadowed by one of its principal competitors, the Life and Casualty Insurance Company of Tennessee ("L&C"), whose 31-story skyscraper in 1957 was, briefly, Nashville's only skyscraper and the tallest building in the Southeast. The new National Life building, across the street from the Tennessee State Capitol, had 30 stories and was both considerably larger and located on higher terrain, so it appeared to be grander than its rival, as intended.
By this point, the
Around the time of the home office move, National Life reorganized as a
Another development of the 1970s was the phasing out of weekly premiums; the former weekly premium was multiplied by 4.3 and became the monthly premium for the same coverage.
In the early 1980s,
In the late 1990s, the National Life/American General building was sold to the
References
- ^ Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. Retrieved February 14, 2018.