It’s a bold statement. And for 50 years, it’s been the driving force behind RGA. We learn from the past to help our clients prepare for the future. While our golden anniversary is an opportunity to reflect on what we’ve accomplished together, it’s also a celebration of what comes next. Join us as we mark 50 years of purpose, progress, and partnerships and explore the challenges ahead.
In 1973, RGA began as the startup reinsurance business of a U.S. mutual life insurance company. Today, we are a global leader in the life and health reinsurance industry. Over those last 50 years, RGA experienced tremendous growth and success and this year we celebrate 50 years of accomplishments.
50 years of driving positive impact – delivering on our purpose and standing by our commitments with actions and accountability.
50 years of progress – innovating and developing solutions that support our clients and transform the industry.
50 years of partnerships – succeeding when our clients succeed, and growing stronger by creating the future together.
And 50 years of the imagination, integrity, and commitment from the people at RGA, who together have built an exceptional and inclusive culture and a resilient business dedicated to our purpose to make financial protection accessible to all.
Anna Manning
President and CEO
Thanks to our customers, partners, and employees, RGA has reshaped life and health insurance, and helped make financial protection accessible to all. For five decades, your successes have been our successes, and we thank you.
General American Life Insurance Company enters into its first life reinsurance arrangement, launching a line of business that is to become RGA.
The young reinsurance division hires its first salesperson and earns its first major mutual company client.
Facultative underwriting is adopted as a key strategy, including a 24-hour service standard that is unmatched in the industry.
General American’s reinsurance division adds its first actuary, Greig Woodring, who would later go on to lead the company as President and Chief Executive Officer for more than three decades.
The reinsurance division acquires 40 clients by 1980, and a year later, RGA Reinsurance Company, the company’s flagship U.S. operation incorporates.
Through teamwork, tenacity, and smarter use of technologies like newly commercialized fax machines, the division marks an industry-high in U.S. facultative cases reviewed (59,000+) by 1984. Also in that year, the division introduces a new strategy for global growth, expanding its Canadian business through a retrocession relationship with Montréal-based St. Lawrence Re. RGA will employ this partnership model repeatedly to explore new markets.
The reinsurance division expands into the special risk reinsurance market.
The division grows business relationships with life insurers in Canada and Europe and, by 1990, will become the second largest life reinsurer in the United States.
The division embarks on the first of many international expansions, marking a new milestone of more than $100 billion of life reinsurance in force. Following two acquisitions, General American forms its first reinsurance subsidiary outside the U.S. in Canada. By the end of the year, the company counts 125 insurers as clients in North America and a number in Europe.
Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated (NYSE: RGA) conducts an initial public offering (IPO) and begins an extraordinary trajectory. RGA will achieve a greater than 17% compound annual growth rate for total assets since the IPO by December 31, 2021, reaching $92.2 billion.
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RGA's first full year as a public company is marked by international expansion. The company opens an Asia-Pacific division and an office in Madrid, Spain, the company's first formal presence in Europe. RGA forms a division in Latin America.
RGA enters the financial reinsurance business after taking on the former ITT Lyndon Life, the largest provider of financial reinsurance to the U.S. life industry. ITT Lyndon’s seasoned team of financial pioneers and dealmakers sought out RGA as a potential purchaser, drawn by the company’s entrepreneurial culture, and in the following years, the business would continue this track record of financial innovation and ingenuity as RGA Global Financial Solutions.
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RGA completes the first asset-intensive transaction in the U.S., develops its first Global Underwriting Manual (GUM), offers the first group reinsurance treaty in Australia, and becomes the largest writer of new life reinsurance and the leader in facultative reinsurance in Canada, underwriting 23,730 cases. The company organizes an institutional markets division to explore new life distribution opportunities.
RGA conducts the first capital-motivated reinsurance treaty in Japan, marks 73% year-over-year premium growth in Canada, and expands operations to six continents, opening RGA Reinsurance Company of South Africa Limited. The company forms the Longer Life Foundation, a unique not-for-profit collaboration with the Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine to support health and longevity research.
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RGA opens its fourth Asian location, the RGA Taiwan Liaison Office, while also launching a groundbreaking whole life medical product in that market. In Canada, RGA completes a string of large in-force block transactions, beginning in 1995 and totaling $14 billion by 1999. In South Africa, the company enters the critical illness business, and in Japan RGA marks 75% revenue growth.
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MetLife acquires General American and effective control of RGA. RGA receives a license to begin offering reinsurance products and services to the U.K., Ireland, and offshore markets, and launches its U.K. critical illness business.
RGA Technology Partners forms to develop life insurance technology solutions and to help market two underwriting software programs: Automated Underwriting and Risk Analysis (AURA®) – a pioneering automated rules engine – and a Facultative Underwriting Application Console (FAC Exchange) – a first-ever, two-way case exchange between insurers and reinsurers. RGA also launches a coinsurance offer for indexed annuities.
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RGA launches a first-of-its-kind critical illness product in South Korea, cementing the company’s reputation in the region, and opens a representative office in Seoul. The company launches the Automated Selection Assessment Program (ASAP), a unique facultative decisioning tool, and its first fixed index annuity asset-intensive transaction. RGA merges its Asia Pacific, Europe, and South Africa divisions amid rapid global expansion.
Amid industry consolidation, RGA acquires the reinsurance business of Allianz Life, amassing $275 billion of reinsurance in force. The Hong Kong team conducts its first product development exercise with a major U.K. insurer, forging a relationship that would lead to RGA’s largest client partnership in Asia, and RGA becomes the first international reinsurer to win branch office license approval in Japan.
RGA opens its trading desk and executes its first in-house bond trade. By in-sourcing trade execution and security selection for the company’s largest asset classes, RGA’s young investment team reduces uninvested cash by more than $100 million and saves the company $1 million annually in asset manager fees.
RGA completes a split-off from MetLife, marking a new stage in the organization’s development as a fully independent company. In the U.K., the team completes the first longevity transaction and launches a unique impaired annuities product. In addition, RGA conducts a pioneering study linking prescription history and mortality.
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RGA announces an agreement to acquire ING Reinsurance’s U.S. and Canadian group reinsurance business. The company launches its groundbreaking Rx scoring tool and receives approval to provide Shariah-compliant “retakaful” reinsurance solutions in Malaysia, entering a rapidly growing market in Asia.
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RGA enters the FORTUNE 500 with a ranking of #321, executes the first longevity treaty in Canada, launches a unique early-stage critical illness product in Singapore, and publishes a landmark distracted driving study. RGA was named “Best Reinsurer for Longevity Risk Transfer” by the Life & Pension magazine Risk Awards, marking the growing prominence in RGA’s Global Financial Solutions business.
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RGA marks its first stable value wrap contract and completes the largest in-force transaction to date, a $5.4 billion 2012 asset-intensive deal. The company introduces multiple wellness-linked products in Malaysia and a groundbreaking cancer medical reimbursement product in Hong Kong and is named to Forbes' “100 Most Trustworthy Companies” list. RGA conducts an influential post-level term research study and earns Best’s Review “Innovation Showcase” honors.
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RGA develops its first longevity “shock absorber” in the Netherlands, an innovative derivative solution to transfer remote longevity risk and thereby reduce an insurer’s required capital for longevity risk. The team also reaches a milestone of 50 AURA clients.
RGA founds RGAX, an innovation lab and new business accelerator. The team also launches Transunion TrueRisk® Life, a scoring solution based on financial credit data, as an exclusive partner, and joins with microinsurer Inclusivity Solutions to pursue the goal of helping to provide protection to over 1 million previously uninsured lives in Africa.
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Anna Manning is appointed President and Chief Executive Officer, succeeding a retiring Greig Woodring. RGA also launches a first capital-motivated transaction in China, an important longevity transaction in France, a groundbreaking U.S. underwriting acceleration program, and ReCap, a wholly owned commercial mortgage lending brand based on a thriving commercial mortgage loan business. The company also unveils a The RGA Foundation to focus philanthropic activities.
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RGA launches a unique integrated impaired lives wellness solution in Hong Kong and marks a facultative underwriting milestone in the U.S. of 3 million cases.
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RGA conducts an innovative mortality cash flow swap in Canada, completes its first longevity transaction in the U.S., and is named to Forbes magazine’s 2018 “Best Regarded Companies” and “World’s Best Employers” lists.
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COVID-19 tests the world while also reaffirming RGA's vital role: The company would ultimately pay more than $2.5 billion in COVID-19-related claim costs through 2022. RGA seamlessly shifts to remote work, rapidly digitizes, and distributes extensive thought leadership. Grants from The RGA Foundation support frontline relief, and RGA becomes the first reinsurer to receive regulatory approval for the European Union’s Binding Corporate Rules (BCRs), recognized as among the most stringent standards for data protection.
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RGA was named Life Reinsurer of the Year at the 25th Asia Insurance Industry Awards 2021 by Asia Insurance Review, capping a year of major accomplishments around the world, including major longevity, asset-intensive, and capital-solutions transactions in multiple markets. RGA also completes a first-ever coinsurance contract in South Korea.
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RGA applies machine learning technologies to augment the facultative underwriting process, completes important longevity transactions, and issues its first Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) report to share progress toward its purpose — to make financial protection accessible to all — while operating and investing responsibly. The company also earns recognition by Intelligent Insurer magazine for its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
RGA Donates to 50 Philanthropic Organizations
To help celebrate our 50th anniversary, we are making 50 donations to 50 deserving organizations. Click on and rotate the interactive globe at right to explore where we give, and learn about each charity by selecting a blue pin.
