Lincoln National Corporation

The iconic sign on Lincoln's former corporate headquarters in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana

Lincoln traces its origin to June 12, 1905, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as the Lincoln National Life Insurance Company. Perry Randall, a Fort Wayne attorney and entrepreneur, suggested the name "Lincoln," arguing that the name of Abraham Lincoln would powerfully convey a spirit of integrity. In August, 1905 Robert Todd Lincoln provided a photograph of his father, along with a letter authorizing the use of his father's likeness and name for company stationery and advertising.

In 1928, LNC president Arthur Hall hired Dr. Louis A. Warren, a Lincoln scholar, and in 1929, LNC acquired one of the largest collections of books about Abraham Lincoln in the United States. The Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne was the second largest Lincoln museum in the country. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois is now the world's largest museum dedicated to the life and times of Abraham Lincoln, after the closing of the Fort Wayne Lincoln Museum June 30, 2008.

Ian Rolland started with Lincoln in 1956, and became president of Lincoln National Life in 1977. When Rolland retired in 1998, new president Jon A. Boscia moved LNC to Philadelphia and started using the Lincoln Financial Group name for marketing. Lincoln National Life, the largest subsidiary, and the Lincoln Museum remained in Fort Wayne.

Lincoln Reinsurance was the first US reinsurance company; it was sold to Swiss Re in 2001. K&K Insurance Specialties was the first to insure events like NASCAR races; it was sold to AON in 1993. Safeco bought American States, a property/casualty insurance business because Lincoln was primarily in life/health. However, LNC even sold a block of disability income business to MetLife in 1999, as it narrowed its focus.

Lincoln moved its headquarters from Indiana to Philadelphia in 1999.[5] In Philadelphia Lincoln was headquartered in the West Tower of Centre Square in Center City.[6]

Lincoln Financial was naming rights sponsor for the 2000 Rugby League World Cup which was held in England.

Lincoln Financial Group purchased the Administrative Management Group, Inc. based in Arlington Heights, Illinois in August 2002. Previously, AMG was a strategic partner of LFG for four years, providing recordkeeping services for the Lincoln Alliance product, a turnkey solution for "employer retirement and employee benefit programs, including investment choices, recordkeeping, plan design, compliance and employee retirement counseling and education."[7]

In 2007, the company moved 400 employees, including its top executives, to Radnor Township from Philadelphia.[5]

Following the acquisition of Jefferson-Pilot Corporation in March 2006, Lincoln Financial acquired group life, disability, and dental insurance divisions. Jefferson-Pilot Corporation was a Fortune 500 company based in Greensboro, North Carolina, founded in 1986 from the merger of Jefferson Standard Insurance (founded 1907 by Charles W. Gold and Pleasant D. Gold, Jr., sons of Pleasant Daniel Gold) and Pilot Life Insurance (founded 1903). The two companies' association actually dated to 1945, when Jefferson Standard bought majority control of Pilot Life; Jefferson Standard had previously bailed Pilot out in the 1930s.[8] The Pilot Life headquarters built in the 1920s and located at 5300 High Point Road, "a careful replication of the governor's mansion built in 1767 in New Bern," was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places in 2022, when Clachan Properties of Richmond, Virginia, was buying the property to develop apartments.[9] The 1986 merger marked the retirement of the Pilot Life brand, most notably the end of its "Sail with the Pilot" jingles, which had been heavily associated with Atlantic Coast Conference college basketball and had been heard on television since 1958.[10] The insurance operations would continue to be headquartered in what became the Lincoln Financial Building.[11]

Lincoln Financial also acquired Jefferson-Pilot's television and radio operations, which were renamed Lincoln Financial Media. Jefferson Standard Insurance put WBTV in Charlotte on the air on Channel 3 in 1949. At the time, Jefferson Standard Insurance also had a 16.5% interest in the Greensboro News Company, licensee of WFMY, which signed on from Greensboro two months after WBTV. Jefferson Standard had purchased WBT radio from CBS in 1947. In 1970, the media interests were folded into a new subsidiary, Jefferson-Pilot Communications, still owned by the insurance company. The broadcasting subsidiary acquired several other radio and television stations across the country, with WBTV serving as the company's flagship station. The group owned 18 radio stations in Miami, Florida; San Diego, California; Denver, Colorado; and Atlanta, Georgia. It also owned WBTV, the CBS affiliate in Charlotte; WCSC-TV, the CBS affiliate in Charleston, South Carolina and WWBT, the NBC affiliate in Richmond, Virginia. In June 2007, the company publicly announced it would explore a sale of this division, and hired Merrill Lynch to assess its strategic options. It was announced on November 12 that Raycom Media purchased the three TV stations,[12] including its sports production division, which was the co-holder to football and basketball games in the Atlantic Coast Conference with Raycom and sole rightsholders to the Southeastern Conference until 2009, when ESPNPlus and CBS Sports acquired the rights. The Raycom Sports brand was merged with LFS as of January 1, 2008.

Though billed as a merger of equals, the merged company carries the LNC name, operates from the LNC offices, with current LNC stockholders holding 61% of the stock, and current LNC directors controlling the new board. The insurance division is based in Greensboro, North Carolina.

On January 19, 2018, Lincoln Financial Group announced that it entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Liberty Life Assurance Company of Boston from Liberty Mutual Insurance Group. Upon completion of the transaction, Lincoln Financial retained Liberty’s Group Benefits business and reinsured Liberty’s Individual Life and Annuity business to Protective Life Insurance Company.