Corporate Planning and the Holding Company

Abstract

Daniel P. Kedzie, Ph.D., C.L.U., C.P.C.U., is Executive Vice President of Management Programs, Inc., a Glen Ellyn, Ill. based consultant firm. He was formerly Vice President and Executive Assistant to the President, CNA. Financial Corporation. This paper was presented at the A.R.I.A. 1968 Annual Meeting. ' Stanford Research Institute, Formal Planning -The Executive's Role (California: Stanford Research Institute, 1964), p. 3. Currier Jordan,2 there is a list of 373 corporations operating in the United States as insurance holding companies, or as financial complexes, industrial conglomerates or non-insurance parents which have insurance company subsidiaries. Significantly, Mr. Jordan states that approximately forty holding companies were formed or were planned in 1967. The first half of 1968 has witnessed a continuing interest in the holding company mechanism with such giants as the Insurance Company of North America and the Continental Insurance Companies getting into the act. Even the mutuals (Nationwide and Kemper, for example) are using the device. It is difficult indeed to avoid reading about an insurer that has not announced plans for the formation of a holding company.3 It is appropriate to say that this is the era of the holding company in the field of insurance. At this very moment, New York is preparing legislation that is expected to provide investment and operating flexibility to many more insurance companies that may want some of the major advantages of the holding company without having to form one. This legislation is expected to affect nrincinallv mutual life insurance