Western & Southern Financial Group, Inc.

Is Western & Southern publicly traded?
No. Western & Southern Financial Group operates under Western & Southern Mutual Holding Company, an Ohio mutual holding company owned by policyowner members. It has no stock ticker and does not file public company reports.

Who founded Western & Southern?
A group of Cincinnati businessmen founded The Western and Southern Life Insurance Company in 1888. No single individual founder is recorded as the company's originator.

Does Western & Southern own Gerber Life?
Yes. The group acquired Gerber Life Insurance Company from Nestlé in September 2018 for approximately $1.55 billion. Gerber Life operates as a member company within the group.

What does Western & Southern sell?
Its member insurers sell life insurance and annuities, including whole life, term life, universal life, and fixed and variable annuities. Non-insurance businesses provide institutional investment management through Fort Washington, mutual funds through Touchstone Investments, and real estate services through Eagle Realty Group.

Who is the CEO of Western & Southern?
John F. Barrett serves as Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Western & Southern Financial Group. His tenure ranks among the longest of any U.S. insurance CEO.

Where is Western & Southern headquartered?
The company is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, where it was founded in 1888. Its downtown Cincinnati offices employ most of its roughly 3,000 employees.

How financially strong is Western & Southern?
The group's member life insurers hold AM Best ratings of A+ (Superior). In 2025 the company reported total equity of $15.4 billion, assets owned of $88 billion, and assets owned and managed of $132.5 billion.

The company was founded in 1888 in Cincinnati, Ohio, by a group of local businessmen as The Western and Southern Life Insurance Company. It built its early business on industrial life insurance, small weekly-premium policies sold door to door to working-class households, a common model among American life insurers of that era.

Through the twentieth century the company grew into one of the larger independent life insurers in the Midwest, expanding into ordinary life insurance and annuities and building a field sales force across multiple states. It remained headquartered in downtown Cincinnati and became a prominent local institution.

A gradual acquisition strategy expanded the family of companies. The group acquired Columbus Life Insurance Company in 1996 and Integrity Life Insurance Company, along with its affiliate National Integrity Life Insurance Company, in 2009. The Lafayette Life Insurance Company also joined the group. Each insurer retained its own charter, brand, and distribution focus while sharing the parent's capital strength.

The current corporate form dates to September 19, 2000, when The Western and Southern Life Insurance Company converted from a pure mutual insurance company to a stock company under Ohio's mutual holding company law. The conversion created Western & Southern Mutual Holding Company at the top of the structure, with Western & Southern Financial Group, Inc. as the intermediate stock holding company for the operating subsidiaries.

Beyond insurance, the group built non-insurance businesses over several decades: Fort Washington Investment Advisors for institutional asset management, Touchstone Investments for mutual funds, Eagle Realty Group for real estate, and distribution arms including IFS Financial Services and W&S Financial Group Distributors.

The largest acquisition in company history came in September 2018, when the group bought Gerber Life Insurance Company from Nestlé for approximately $1.55 billion, adding a nationally recognized juvenile life insurance brand. The company is also known locally for its sports and civic ties: it was the title sponsor of Cincinnati's professional tennis tournament, which carried the Western & Southern Open name for more than two decades.

As a private mutual company, Western & Southern publishes less formal ESG reporting than public insurers. Its community programs center on Cincinnati, where it funds civic, health, and education initiatives and where its headquarters and real estate operations make it one of the city's largest corporate citizens.

The company holds no major third-party sustainability certifications. Its strongest external validation is financial rather than environmental: the A+ (Superior) AM Best ratings held by its member life insurers.