Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company

What does Nationwide own?
Nationwide owns a group of insurance and financial services companies including Nationwide Mutual, Nationwide Life, National Casualty, the Allied insurance companies, Harleysville, and Scottsdale Insurance. It also owns asset management and annuity businesses and operates the largest pet insurance program in the United States. All subsidiaries sit under the mutual parent owned by policyholders.

Is Nationwide publicly traded?
No. Nationwide is a mutual insurance company owned by its policyholders. There is no stock, no ticker, and no way for outside investors to buy an ownership stake. Earnings accumulate into the company's capital base, which stood at a record $32.8 billion at the end of 2025.

Who founded Nationwide?
The Ohio Farm Bureau Federation chartered the company in Columbus, Ohio on April 14, 1926 as Farm Bureau Mutual Automobile Insurance Company. Murray D. Lincoln, a young Farm Bureau executive, was the driving organizer and led the company for decades. It was renamed Nationwide in 1955.

Where is Nationwide headquartered?
Nationwide is headquartered at One Nationwide Plaza in Columbus, Ohio. The company also operates regional headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona and Des Moines, Iowa, reflecting the heritage of its Scottsdale and Allied acquisitions.

How many brands does Nationwide own?
Nationwide consolidated most of its affiliates under the master Nationwide brand after 2014. Consumer-facing names still in active use include Nationwide, Allied Insurance, Harleysville, Scottsdale Insurance, and Nationwide pet insurance, among a larger family of underwriting companies. Roughly half a dozen brand names remain in meaningful market use.

Who owns Nationwide?
Nationwide is owned by its policyholders under a mutual insurance structure. There are no shareholders. Policyholder members elect the board of directors, which appoints executive management. CEO Kirt Walker has led the company since 2019.

Has Nationwide made major acquisitions recently?
Yes. In 2025 Nationwide completed the $1.25 billion acquisition of Allstate's employer stop-loss benefits business and added Markel's reinsurance business through a strategic transaction. Both moves accelerated the company's institutional, employer-focused growth strategy ahead of its 2026 centennial.

Nationwide began on April 14, 1926 in Columbus, Ohio, when the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation chartered the Farm Bureau Mutual Automobile Insurance Company to give farmers access to auto insurance at rates that reflected rural driving risk. Urban insurers charged farmers the same rates as city drivers, and the Farm Bureau's answer was a mutual company owned by its own policyholders. Murray D. Lincoln, a young Farm Bureau executive who later became one of the most prominent cooperative leaders in American business, was the principal organizer and served as the company's chief executive for decades.

The company expanded quickly beyond its founding charter. It moved into other Midwestern states through the 1930s, added fire insurance and life insurance, and by the 1940s operated in a majority of states. In 1955 the board renamed the company Nationwide Insurance to reflect a footprint that had long since outgrown the farm-only identity, while keeping the mutual, policyholder-owned structure intact. The famous "Nationwide is on your side" jingle followed in 1969 and became one of the longest-running advertising signatures in American insurance.

Acquisition-driven growth defined the second half of the century. Nationwide bought the Scottsdale Insurance Company in the 1970s to enter excess and surplus lines, acquired the Farmland Insurance companies to cement its position as the largest farm insurer, and added PEBSCO for the deferred-compensation retirement business that eventually made it the top provider of 457 plans. The 1990s brought two defining deals: the 1998 merger with Allied Group of Des Moines, which added a large independent-agent channel in the Midwest and West, and the 1999 purchase of Wausau Insurance for large commercial accounts.

The company entered the 21st century with a fragmented brand identity, dozens of affiliates operating under their own names. In 2014 and 2015, Nationwide consolidated nearly all of them under a single brand and a refreshed "N and Eagle" logo, retiring names such as VPI, which had issued America's first pet insurance policy in 1982 and was acquired outright by Nationwide in 2009. Harleysville Mutual, a mid-Atlantic regional insurer, was acquired in 2012 for approximately $760 million and folded into the Nationwide commercial lines operation.

Kirt Walker, a company veteran who joined in 1986, became CEO in 2019. Under his leadership Nationwide pushed deeper into institutional businesses: annuities, pension risk transfer, and reinsurance. In 2025 the company completed the $1.25 billion acquisition of Allstate's employer stop-loss benefits business and added Markel's reinsurance portfolio through a strategic transaction, both moves aimed at lines where employers, not consumers, are the customers. Businesses serving employers now generate more than a third of Nationwide's growth.

The company enters 2026, its centennial year, on a fifth consecutive year of record growth. Total sales and premiums reached $73.2 billion in 2025, up 7 percent, with net operating income of $4.3 billion, up 37 percent.

As a mutual insurer, Nationwide publishes corporate responsibility reporting centered on member value, community investment, and associate welfare rather than shareholder ESG metrics. The Nationwide Foundation distributed more than $41 million to nonprofits in 2025, and the company is among the largest corporate contributors to United Way. It holds no B Corp certification, which is uncommon in the insurance sector generally.

The company's most visible ethical structure is its mutuality itself: policyholder ownership means the enterprise has no fiduciary conflict between customer interests and shareholder returns. Nationwide also operates long-standing partnerships in agriculture and food security, consistent with its Farm Bureau origins, and maintains a large associate-volunteerism program through its Columbus campus and regional offices.

On climate, Nationwide's exposure runs through underwriting rather than operations. Catastrophe losses from hurricanes, convective storms, and wildfires are a core cost driver for the property and casualty book, and the company has invested in catastrophe modeling, defensible-space mitigation programs, and reinsurance to manage that exposure.

Nationwide is a Fortune 100 company and has appeared on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For and related workplace lists in multiple years. The company holds strong financial strength ratings across its principal underwriting subsidiaries, including A1-level ratings from Moody's and A+ ratings from AM Best on core property and casualty companies.

It has received consistent industry recognition for its retirement and annuity businesses, including top placement in the PLANSPONSOR recordkeeping survey for 457 plans, and AM Best market-segment rankings list it as the number-two insurer of managing general agents and a top-ten excess and surplus writer. Great Place to Work certification and Comparably workplace awards have recognized its associate culture in recent years.

Nationwide's largest documented regulatory matter remains the 2012 data breach in which attackers accessed personal information of approximately 1.27 million consumers through the company's systems. In 2017 Nationwide agreed to a $5.5 million settlement with attorneys general from 32 states and the District of Columbia, along with mandated upgrades to its information-security practices, including stricter controls on software patching and data inventory. The company did not admit wrongdoing.

Like other property and casualty carriers, Nationwide has faced litigation and regulatory review over claims handling after catastrophes, including disputes over roof claims and water damage coverage in storm-affected states. Regulators in several states have examined non-renewal and rate-increase decisions as carriers pulled back exposure in high-risk markets, a pattern affecting the entire industry rather than Nationwide alone.

The company's advertising has drawn occasional scrutiny, most memorably the 2015 Super Bowl "Make Safe Happen" spot featuring a child narrating fatal accident risks, which generated significant public backlash for its tone even as the safety-partnership campaign it promoted continued. Nationwide also periodically faces wrongful-denial suits from policyholders; courts have ruled for and against the company in different jurisdictions, a normal pattern for an insurer of its scale.