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Robert E. Wright and George David Smith, Mutually Beneficial: The
Guardian and Life Insurance in America
(New York: New
York University
Press, 2004).
Purchase this title from:
Amazon
Barnes
and Noble
New
York University Press
Review blurbs:
”The authors have done a superb job. They have written a remarkably
lucid and elegantly organized history that keeps the major themes in view,
even while discussing the minutiae of crafting and marketing various new
insurance products or of managing the firm and its investment portfolio. It
integrates the Guardian's career into a wider account of the American
life-insurance business and American economic history more generally, and it
manages to do so with a light touch. The book stakes out a large terrain and
elevates the field, standing alongside classics in the field of insurance
history.” -- Business History Review
”The authors did a nice job of linking the company's history to wider
events within the industry. Instead of emphasizing people, the authors illustrated
their conclusions with scores of tables showing expense ratios, mortality
rates, and various aspects of balance sheet items. Overall, this volume is
well written.” -- Enterprise
& Society
“Robert E. Wright and George D. Smith's book
provides readers with a serious corporate history of the Guardian Life
Insurance Company. They thereby help to alleviate the ‘paucity of
serious literature’ on the history of life insurance (p. xvii). Based
on extensive research in the firm's records, interviews with employees, and a
wide-ranging survey of other primary and secondary sources, the book provides
a detailed history of Guardian, from its founding in 1860 to 2002. Today
Guardian is one of the top fifty life and health insurers according to the
insurance journal, National Underwriter. Drawing on the psychological,
anthropological, and economic literature, Wright and Smith make several
important insights regarding the supply of and demand for life insurance and
related policies and Guardian’s role helping to create and meet this
demand.” – American
Historical Review
”The authors' aim is to produce a work of high scholarly merit but that
is also readable. They succeed admirably on the first count, and go a long
way towards succeeding on the second. This is, without doubt, a major
contribution to the economics and history of life insurance in the twentieth
century. Wright and Smith have provided, for example, the most comprehensive
account yet of product development, and the section
on investment strategies is also important.” -- Accounting,
Business, and Financial History
”The discussion of the tensions between the field force and home office
is an important contribution. Agents wanted low-cost insurance, good back
office service, a wide product range, and easy underwriting standards to
increase sales and commissions. The home office was interested in controlling
expenses, maintaining high underwriting standards, and keeping a manageable
product line. The material on operation within a niche ethnic life insurance
market in the early days, and the heavy international component of total
business up to World War I, are also useful. Investment performance and the
risk-return tradeoff are generally well-covered.” -- EH.Net
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