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You may have wondered what the "mutual" means in the names of some insurance companies. For Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual), it generally means that if you are an insured under a life insurance policy issued by MassMutual, you share in the ownership of the company as a member and are entitled to vote for the company's board of directors. Moreover, if you also own the policy, you may be entitled to share in any annual dividends that may be declared.
Insurance companies that are not mutual companies are most often structured as publicly owned stock companies, where the company is owned by its shareholders. In recent years, some mutual insurance companies have "demutualized," and reorganized themselves into publicly owned stock companies.
The motivation behind such reorganization typically is to issue stock in order to generate capital for faster growth -- and to acquire other companies.
At MassMutual, we have no need at this time to generate capital by issuing stock.
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