New York Life Insurance Company

What does New York Life own?
New York Life owns its insurance subsidiaries including NYLIAC, Life Insurance Company of North America, and its group benefit entities, plus the New York Life Investment Management platform with boutiques such as Candriam, MacKay Shields, Apogem Capital, Ausbil, Tristan Capital Partners, and NYL Investors.

Is New York Life publicly traded?
No. New York Life is a mutual insurance company owned by its participating policy owners. It has no stock and cannot be taken over. It has held this structure since its founding in 1845 and did not demutualize when peers such as MetLife and Prudential converted to stock companies.

Who founded New York Life?
The company was founded in New York City in 1845 as the Nautilus Insurance Company, with businessman and former mayor James De Peyster Ogden as its first president. It was renamed New-York Life Insurance Company in 1849.

Where is New York Life headquartered?
New York Life is headquartered in New York City at 51 Madison Avenue, a landmark building completed in 1928 on the site of the original Madison Square Garden.

How many brands does New York Life own?
New York Life operates primarily under the New York Life brand for insurance and retirement products. Its investment arm operates under roughly eight boutique brands including Candriam, MacKay Shields, and Apogem Capital, plus the NYLI mutual fund and ETF family.

Who owns New York Life?
New York Life's participating policy owners own the company under its mutual structure. There are no shareholders. Policy owners elect the board of directors and receive declared dividends; the company declared a record $2.8 billion dividend for payment in 2026.

What is New York Life's revenue?
On a statutory accounting basis, New York Life Insurance Company reported total income of $29.6 billion in 2025. Consolidated revenue across the family of companies is approximately $62.6 billion (FY2025), the basis on which the company ranks on the Fortune 500.

New York Life was founded on April 12, 1845, in New York City as the Nautilus Insurance Company. James De Peyster Ogden, a businessman and former mayor of New York, served as its first president. The company was organized as a mutual insurer from the start, meaning policyholders rather than stockholders owned the enterprise and shared in its surplus. In 1849, the company adopted the name New-York Life Insurance Company.

The early decades established patterns that persist. The company expanded westward with agencies in California and across the growing nation, and it wrote policies for figures across American public life. It survived the financial panics of the nineteenth century and the Civil War, during which it continued operations in the North while its Southern business was disrupted.

Under President John A. McCall in the late nineteenth century, New York Life grew into one of the largest insurers in the country. The era also produced a regulatory reckoning for the industry: the 1905 Armstrong Investigation in New York exposed speculative practices and political entanglements at the major life insurers, leading to reforms that reshaped how life insurance companies invested and operated. New York Life, like its peers, adjusted to the stricter regime.

The twentieth century brought diversification. The company built its headquarters at 51 Madison Avenue, completed in 1928 on the site of the original Madison Square Garden; the building's gold pyramid roof became a New York landmark. New York Life expanded product lines into annuities and group insurance, grew its investment operations, and maintained its mutual structure even as competitors demutualized. Several large American life insurers converted to stock companies in the 1990s and 2000s, including Prudential and MetLife. New York Life did not, arguing that mutuality supported its long-term orientation and policyholder alignment.

In 2014, the company's investment arm acquired Candriam, a European asset manager formerly known as Dexia Asset Management, in a transaction that also brought Australian manager Ausbil into the group. The deal added approximately $100 billion in assets under management and extended New York Life's investment reach into Europe and sustainable investing.

Craig DeSanto became CEO in 2022 and added the chairman role in 2023. Under DeSanto, the company unified its general account and third-party asset management businesses into a single platform, New York Life Investment Management, effective January 1, 2026. The combination created a global investment platform with approximately $785 billion in assets under management at announcement, bringing together boutiques including Candriam, MacKay Shields, Apogem Capital, Ausbil, Tristan Capital Partners, and NYL Investors.

The 2025 results capped a run of record years. Operating earnings reached $3.6 billion, insurance sales grew 14%, annuity sales rose 40%, and the company declared its largest-ever policyholder dividend.

As a mutual company without public shareholders, New York Life's disclosures differ from stock insurers'. The company publishes an annual report to policy owners covering financial results, governance, and community investment rather than a public-company ESG filing.

On responsible investing, Candriam is one of the oldest dedicated sustainable asset managers in Europe, and several of the investment boutiques offer ESG-integrated strategies. The company reports workforce and philanthropic metrics, including its support for grief and bereavement programs for children through the New York Life Foundation.

New York Life is not a Certified B Corporation, and its insurance products carry no third-party sustainability certifications, consistent with industry norms.

• Fortune 500: Ranked among the largest American companies by revenue; placed 69th on the 2025 Fortune 500 list
• Financial strength ratings: Highest available grades from A.M. Best (A++), Fitch (AAA), Moody's (Aaa), and S&P (AA+), a ratings combination held by no other US life insurer
• Fortune Most Admired Companies: Recurring inclusion in the life and health insurance category
• Ward's Top 50: Recurring recognition among top-performing US life insurers

New York Life operates under New York State insurance regulation and the oversight of the departments of insurance in each state where it sells. Like all large life insurers, it has faced periodic market conduct examinations and policyholder disputes.

The company has been a defendant in industry-wide litigation over lapse and non-forfeiture practices and over cost-of-insurance increases on universal life policies, a dispute that has affected multiple carriers. Such matters have generally been resolved through settlements or defended through litigation without a defining adverse judgment.

In 2020, New York Life announced a $1 billion impact investment initiative aimed at underserved communities, addressing criticism leveled broadly at the industry over investment allocation. The company's historical record includes the same early-century regulatory reckoning all major life insurers faced under the Armstrong Investigation, which produced industry-wide reforms.