American Family Insurance

American Family Insurance (aka AmFam) is a private mutual company that focuses on property, casualty and auto insurance, but also offers commercial insurance, life, health, and homeowners coverage, as well as investment and retirement-planning products. A Fortune 500 company, its revenues for 2008 were over $6.7 billion. It should not be confused with American Family Home Insurance Company, a subsidiary of Munich Re subsidiary American Modern Insurance Group, Inc., or American Family Life Insurance Company of Columbus.
American Family Insurance's history began on October 3, 1927,
when insurance salesman Herman Wittwer opened the doors of Farmers Mutual Insurance Company in Madison, Wisconsin (not to be confused with the Farmers Insurance Group). At the time, the company's only product was auto insurance and its target market was farmers. Wittwer believed farmers presented lower risks than city drivers because they drove less often and not at all in the winter.[
Over the years, Farmers Mutual expanded its market and product line to meet the changing needs of its customers. In 1963, Farmers Mutual changed its name to American Family Mutual Insurance Company to reflect its broader customer base.
Subsidiaries[edit]
Companies of the American Family Insurance Group include:

American Family Mutual Insurance Company (AFMIC)
American Standard Insurance Company (ASIC)
American Family Life Insurance Company (AFLIC)
American Family Brokerage, Inc. (AFBI)
American Family Insurance Company of Ohio (AFICO; Ohio subsidiary, companion to American Family Mutual Insurance Company)
American Standard Insurance Company of Ohio (ASICO; Ohio subsidiary; companion to American Standard Insurance Company of Wisconsin)
American Family Securities, LLC (AFS)
Amfam.com Inc.(AMFAM)
PGC Holdings Corporation (General Insurance Companies
Significant Milestones
Below is a list of milestones in the corporate history of American Family Mutual Insurance.

1927 Farmers Mutual Automobile Insurance Company was founded on Oct. 3 in Madison, Wis.
1938 Both premiums and assets surpassed $1 million.
1957 Farmers Mutual began to offer sickness and accident insurance.
1958 Company introduced homeowners insurance and opened American Family Life Insurance Company.
1959 Farmers Mutual entered the computer age with the RAMAC 305.
1961 American Standard began sales.
1962 Company began to offer farmowners insurance.
1963 Policyholders gave final approval to change the company's name to American Family Mutual Insurance Company.
1969 American Family Financial Services opened.
1975 Commercial Lines was introduced. American Family became the fifth-largest mutual auto insurer.
1981 Assets surpass $1 billion. American Family became the fourth-largest mutual auto insurance company.

1985 American Family Brokerage, Inc. opened.
1986 American Family posted its first $100 million operating gain.
1992 Policyholders' surplus exceeded $1 billion.
1994 American Family rolled out its catastrophe trailer. The company ranked as the 11th-largest property/casualty insurer.
1996 American Family first appeared on the Fortune 500 list at number 403.
1997 American Family became the 10th-largest property/casualty insurer in the nation. Assets surpassed $8 billion.
2001 American Family Securities, LLC introduced variable products. Assets for American Family Mutual Insurance Company exceeded $10 billion.
2001 Furthers expansion into Utah and Idaho. American Family in 17 states across the U.S.
2002 American Family celebrated its 75th anniversary.
2003 American Family donated $10,000,000.00 towards construction of the future UW Children's Hospital, to be named American Family Children's Hospital.
2006 Furthers expansion into Washington State. American Family in 18 states across the U.S.
2009 Furthers expansion into Georgia. American Family in 19 states across U.S.
2012 American Family Insurance completes its acquisition of The General Insurance
2013 American Family Insurance completes its acquisition of Homesite Insurance

American Express

The American Express Company, also known as Amex, is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Manhattan's Three World Financial Center in New York City, United States. Founded in 1850, it is one of the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial AverageThe company is best known for its credit card, charge card, and traveler's cheque businesses. Amex cards account for approximately 24% of the total dollar volume of credit card transactions in the US.

Early history

In 1850, American Express was started as an express mail business in Buffalo, New York. It was founded as a joint stock corporation by the merger of the express companies owned by Henry Wells (Wells & Company), William G. Fargo (Livingston, Fargo & Company), and John Warren Butterfield (Wells, Butterfield & Company, the successor earlier in 1850 of Butterfield, Wasson & Company).Wells and Fargo also started Wells Fargo & Co. in 1852 when Butterfield and other directors objected to the proposal that American Express extend its operations to California.
American Express initially established its headquarters in a building at the intersection of Jay Street and Hudson Street in what was later called the Tribeca section of Manhattan. For years it enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the movement of express shipments (goods, securities, currency, etc.) throughout New York State. In 1874, American Express moved its headquarters to 65 Broadway in what was becoming the Financial District of Manhattan, a location it was to retain through two buildings.

American Express buildings

In 1854, the American Express Co. purchased a lot on Vesey Street in New York City as the site for its stables. The company's first New York headquarters was an 1858 marble Italianate palazzo at 55–61 Hudson Street, which had a busy freight depot on the ground story with a spur line from the Hudson River Railroad. A stable was constructed in 1867, five blocks north at 4–8 Hubert Street.
The company prospered sufficiently that headquarters were moved in 1874 from the wholesale shipping district to the budding Financial District, and into rented offices in two five-story brownstone commercial buildings at 63 and 65 Broadway that were owned by the Harmony family.
In 1880, American Express built a new warehouse behind the Broadway Building at 46 Trinity Place. The designer is unknown, but it has a façade of brick arches that are redolent of pre-skyscraper New York. American Express has long been out of this building, but it still bears a terracotta seal with the American Express Eagle.
ten-story building by Edward H. Kendall on the site of its former headquarters on Hudson Street.



By 1903, the company had assets of some $28 million, second only to the National City Bank of New York among financial institutions in the city. To reflect this, the company purchased the Broadway buildings and site.

At the end of the Wells-Fargo reign in 1914, an aggressive new president, George Chadbourne Taylor (1868–1923), who had worked his way up through the company over the previous thirty years, decided to build a new headquarters. The old buildings, dubbed by the New York Times as "among the ancient landmarks" of lower Broadway, were inadequate for such a rapidly expanding concern. After some delays due to the war in Europe, the 21-story neo-classical American Express Co. Building was constructed in 1916–17 to the design of James L. Aspinwall, of the firm of Renwick, Aspinwall & Tucker, the successor to the architectural practice of the eminent James Renwick, Jr.. The building consolidated the two lots of the former buildings with a single address: 65 Broadway. This building was part of the "Express Row" section of lower Broadway at the time. The building completed the continuous masonry wall of its block-front and assisted in transforming Broadway into the "canyon" of neo-classical masonry office towers familiar to this day.American Express extended its reach nationwide by arranging affiliations with other express companies (including Wells Fargo – the replacement for the two former companies that merged to form American Express), railroads, and steamship companies.

In 1882, American Express started its expansion in the area of financial services by launching a money order business[13] to compete with the United States Post Office's money orders.

Sometime between 1888 and 1890, J. C. Fargo took a trip to Europe and returned frustrated and infuriated. Despite the fact that he was president of American Express and that he carried with him traditional letters of credit, he found it difficult to obtain cash anywhere except in major cities. Fargo went to Marcellus Flemming Berry and asked him to create a better solution than the letter of credit. Berry introduced the American Express Traveler's Cheque which was launched in 1891 in denominations of $10, $20, $50, and $100.[17]

Traveler's cheques established American Express as a truly international company. In 1914, at the onset of World War I, American Express in Europe was among the few companies to honor the letters of credit (issued by various banks) held by Americans in Europe, because other financial institutions refused to assist these stranded travelers.