CUNA Hopes To Move Insurance Unit To Iowa

The old Mutual Aid Society moved to its current hometown of Waverly in 1922 and became a legal reserve life insurance company in 1937. The company changed its name to Century Companies of America, the last name it held before the affiliation with CUNA Mutual, in 1984, according to the examination report.

Legally, CUNA Mutual and CUNA Mutual Life are still separate companies.

Wisconsin and Iowa have similar insurance laws, but CUNA Mutual wants to redomesticate its Wisconsin units to Iowa in part because “Wisconsin’s demutualization law is both archaic…and untested,” Ekenberg writes. “To our knowledge, no Wisconsin mutual insurance company has ever gone public after demutualizing.”

In Iowa, several large insurers have demutualized, and at least 2 have used mutual holding companies as bases for going public, Ekenberg writes.

“While CUNA Mutual has no plans for demutualization, if changing business requirements ever dictate that demutualization is a prudent course for the company and its policyholders, it wants to be positioned to move as quickly as reasonably possible,” Ekenberg writes.

Iowa also has a new law that could let a mutual holding company include certain types of derivatives in its legal reserves, and CUNA Mutual might want to try using that law, Ekenberg writes.

Wisconsin has posted documents related to the CUNA Mutual redomestication request at Document Link