page_title: Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company / History / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Caleb Rice, first president of MassMutual and first mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts.
context_page_description: The Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, founded in 1851, is an American mutual life insurance company serving five million clients. With headquarters in Springfield, Massachusetts, the company employs more than 7,000 in the United States, and a total of 10,614 internationally. Since 1998, it has traded under the name MassMutual Financial Group.
  MassMutual ranked No. 93 in the 2018 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. The company has revenues of $29.6 billion and assets under management of $675 billion.
  MassMutual provides financial products such as life insurance, disability income insurance, long term care insurance, retirement/401 plan services, and annuities. Major affiliates include Barings LLC, and Haven Life Insurance Agency.
context_section_description: Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual) began operation on May 15, 1851 in Springfield, Massachusetts. It was founded by George W. Rice, who subscribed for a guarantee capital of $100,000. As an insurance agent who sold policies for Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company in Hartford, Connecticut, Rice wanted to open a company of his own in neighboring Massachusetts. Similar to Connecticut Mutual, this new enterprise grew into a mutual company.
  The popularity of mutual companies in the insurance industry had grown significantly between 1843 and MassMutual's creation. Approximately a dozen competing mutual companies, including Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York (1842), Mutual Life Insurance Company of New Jersey (1845), and Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance (1846), experienced promising success, because minimal amounts of working capital were required for operation.
  However, MassMutual's path followed a different course when an 1851 Massachusetts state law required all insurance companies to take an initial stock subscription of $100,000. Rice met that requirement by recruiting 31 investors to purchase stock in his company to meet the mandatory subscription. After the company began operations and built sufficient reserves to meet regulatory requirements, the 31 stockholders were paid back in 1867, the stock was retired, and MassMutual functioned as a mutual company.
  MassMutual's first president was Caleb Rice, appointed in 1851. A cousin of founder George W. Rice, Caleb Rice served as president of MassMutual for 22 years, making him the longest-serving president in the company's history. As a former lawyer and Sheriff of Hampden County, Massachusetts, Rice served on the Massachusetts House of Representatives for five years and was later elected as the first mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts from 1852 to 1853. 
  MassMutual began to sell policies to homeowners and workers throughout New England. As westward expansion grew, fueled by excitement from the California Gold Rush (1848–1855) and railroad development, MassMutual agents began to sell high-premium insurance policies to railway and steamship workers, gold-rush adventurers, and people relocating south of the Mason–Dixon line. For the next several decades, MassMutual's expansion continued to mirror that of the United States. By the time MassMutual was established, 9,000 miles (14,000 km) of functioning railroad lines had been built, giving MassMutual the opportunity to establish agencies in New York City, Cleveland, Chicago, and Detroit by 1855. MassMutual reached the West Coast in 1868 and established an office in San Francisco before the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869.
  Across the industry, sales of life insurance policies began to substantially increase by the late 1850s. Sales reached $200 million by 1862, then tripled to just under $600 million by the end of the Civil War. Westward expansion and increased marketing efforts of the insurance industry were largely responsible for this growth.
  Another effort that contributed to the increased selling of life insurance policies was the passing of a non-forfeiture law by the Massachusetts legislature in 1861. The law forbade companies from canceling policies, even if premium payments were not received from policyholders, and stated that policies would be converted to term-life policies and companies were to pay any death claims that occurred during this term period. As the industry continued to grow, so did MassMutual, and by 1873 – just over 20 years since their first $1,000 policy was issued on August 2, 1851– the company held $4,501,909 in assets.
  Caleb Rice's presidency of MassMutual came to an end in 1873 when he was succeeded by E.W. Bond,  who held the position for 13 years. Bond was replaced in 1886 by Colonel Martin Van Buren Edgerly, who started his career with MassMutual in 1859. He was the first major example of MassMutual's tendency to look from within to promote and enforce inward leadership.
caption: Caleb Rice (1792–1873), 1st company president, and 1st mayor of Springfield
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