AXA history

Founded in 1859 as The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, the company began in a $75 dollar-a-month rented office at 98 Broadway in New York City.

Business boomed during the Civil War, as the ravages of armed conflict impressed upon many the wisdom of insuring their lives. It had an agent in Southeast Asia as early as 1860, and over the next two decades it established its presence elsewhere in the Far East, in Europe, the Middle East, South America, and Canada.

In 1865, the last year of the war, the firm had $27.6 million worth of coverage in force.

William Alexander died in 1874 and was succeeded by Henry Baldwin Hyde.

At this very moment La Providence was merging with Le Secours, another insurance company established in 1880.

In 1881 under the management of Masselin, both companies merged under the name of Ancienne Mutuelle and the new life entity, Mutuelle Vie, came into being.

Business continued to skyrocket during Hyde's active stewardship, and in 1886 Equitable surpassed Mutual to become the largest life insurance company in the world.

In 1902, all of the offices were gathered in Rouen.

He found a buyer in financier Thomas Ryan, who persuaded the directors to elect his associate Paul Morton, who had been secretary of the navy under Theodore Roosevelt, as chairman. It started in January 1905, when James Hyde threw a lavish coming-out party for his niece.

The influenza epidemic of 1918, however, cost the firm about $8 million in death claims.

The process was a drawn-out one, but by 1925 the firm was selling only a few policies outside the United States.

In 1929 the firm booked more than $1 billion worth of new policies and had $6.8 billion worth of coverage in force.

Among the latter was the Ancienne Mutuelle Transport de Bétail, created in 1939 in order to insure rail transport of livestock.

In 1942 the firm took its first plunge into large-scale housing development, building a series of apartment complexes in Brooklyn.

The arrival in 1946 of André Sahut d’Izarn will mark the beginning of a revival.

1955 – The roots of international growth

In 1968 Equitable pledged $60 million to an industry-wide drive to finance the rehabilitation of housing units in urban slums.