Auto Owners Insurance

Auto-Owners Insurance is the "16th largest Michigan-based company on the FORTUNE 500 list," according to PR Newswire. "With $5.017 billion in revenue for 2009, [the company remains] the second largest property-casualty mutual insurance company in the nation."[3] Auto-Owners history can be traced back from its present management to the early leadership of Vern V. Moulton who, in 1916, organized Auto-Owners Insurance Company in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan The infant Company had no capital and was housed in one room of a bank building.[4] Auto-Owners operated in Mt. Pleasant for a little less than a year. In 1917, VV Moulton literally picked up the Company, placed it under his arm and in his pocket ("The Auto-Owners Insurance Co. financial statement at the end of 1916 revealed assets of $174, a networth of $0, annual premium income of $2060, and 10 losses paid totalling $186."[5]), and moved Auto-Owners to Lansing, Michigan. It wasn't long before the Depression began when Auto-Owners weathered the lowest point of that era - the bank holidays of February 1933. The Company demonstrated its corporate strength and financial stability by paying all claims promptly, daily, and in cash. The firm was then writing more than $2.5 million in insurance premiums. Auto-Owners entered the general casualty insurance field in 1940, having previously written only automobile insurance. During the next five years, the Company found it necessary to acquire three more buildings in the vicinity of its ...