John Hancock history

Then, in March 1879, Hancock got a new president, no less a figure than the Massachusetts insurance commissioner, Stephen H. Rhodes, who by midsummer was selling industrial insurance in Boston.

In 1902 Hancock’s industrial agents were urged to push ordinary life insurance.

In 1905 the Armstrong Committee’s investigation of the New York State insurance industry achieved a general overhaul of the life insurance industry, and it led to needed reforms.

It replaced a ten-story building which in 1922 had won the Boston Society of Architects award for its designer, J. Harleston Parker.

In 1924 Hancock helped launch the group insurance business in the United States by offering such insurance to employers.

The Great Depression shook up the world but not Hancock’s labor whose business rose 7.3% in 1930, the Depression’s first full calendar year.

Byron K. Elliott, 67 and a Hancock employee since 1933—had been a judge in Indiana before that—remained as chairman and ran the $7.8 billion investment portfolio.

In 1937, its agents picketed the company’s New York office on Christmas Eve.

In 1944 Guy Cox became chairman, and Paul F. Clark, a former agent, became president at age 51.

In 1948, in an investment market where even 5% was an unheard-of return, Hancock had assets of more than $2 billion.

Hancock succumbed at least temporarily, refusing a lease renewal in 1953 to the Community Church of Boston, which had rented its home-office auditorium for 30 years for its liberal lecturers.

By 1954 Hancock ranked fifth among United States insurance companies, with $3.8 billion in assets, and was investing as much as $4.6 million a week.

Hancock formed a real estate subsidiary in 1968 and entered the mutual fund business the next year.

In 1972, Doctor Mary Ella Robertson was named as the first black woman and first female to serve on the John Hancock Board.

The prime rate shot up, and in 1980 many life insurance companies found themselves faced with a negative cash flow, for the first time in memory.

Normally rivals, these firms coauthored a draft bill for reform that was unveiled in October 1987.

The company launched the ads in April of 1996 with a media buy concentrated around the 1996 Summer Olympics (Hancock is a Worldwide Olympic Sponsor). The spots ("Triple Squeeze," "Shepherds," "Subway," "Alone," and "Freedom") took six months to create.

Dunlap, Bill. "When All the Stars Align: The Creative Minds Behind Award-Winning Spots Tell How They Came Together." Shoot June 20, 1997.

The campaign won the Grand Prix at the Cannes International Advertising Awards Festival in its first year, ran for 10 years, and in 1998 was named one of the top 20 campaigns of the preceding 20 years by Adweek.

The 2000 television campaign was designed to appeal to members of households earning more than $75,000 in annual income, but the spots were otherwise not meant to split consumers along traditional demographic lines.

In 2004 John Hancock continued to emphasize real people and the company's potential role in their lives but focused a new campaign on children, returning the spotlight to its core life insurance business with the tagline "It's Not Your Life You Insure."

* Represents inforce John Hancock life insurance and long-term care policyholders as of December 2020. ** Payments made in 2020 for life insurance and long-term care claims.

"John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company ." International Directory of Company Histories. . Retrieved April 15, 2021 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-magazines/john-hancock-mutual-life-insurance-company