Our History

1925

We took our first steps toward providing financial security when the COUNTRY Mutual Insurance Company® began selling fire and lightning insurance.

1926

We added crop hail and farm equipment insurance to our offerings to help our clients protect the things that were important to their livelihood.

1927

Adding auto insurance allowed us to provide our clients another important piece of financial security.

1929

We moved another step closer to providing financial security to our clients by adding COUNTRY Life Insurance Company®.

1935

Our first female representative was hired. At this time, we had an agency force of 100 and rate books and pencils were the tools of the trade.

1953

In May of this year, COUNTRY Preferred Insurance Company® incorporated and began officially doing business in June of the same year.

1961

Our downtown Chicago office became too small and too far from our clients by the end of the 1950s. Our home office relocated to Bloomington, IL and opened in September, 1961.

1965

The addition of COUNTRY® Capital Management Company, a registered broker dealer, allowed us to offer our clients securities product, which has grown to include mutual funds, variable annuities, variable life insurance and 529 College Savings Plans.

1997

Building on one of our guiding principles – putting people first – we made our client service center available 24 hours a day.

2010

85 years young and still helping our clients protect what matters most. Over the years, we have grown to serve clients in both rural and urban settings in many states across America.

1964

We purchased Mid-America Fire and Marine Company, adding Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma to our area of operation.

1980

Product, service and geographic expansion put COUNTRY Financial® on the map beyond Illinois in the 80s.

1998

We formed an alliance with Middlesex Mutual Assurance Company, Middletown, CT.

2001

Mutual Service Insurance (MSI) joined COUNTRY Financial®, adding four states to a new Central Region.

2005

We formed an alliance with the Cotton States Insurance Group, Atlanta, GA, operating in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Tennessee.

2006

We formed an alliance with Holyoke Mutual Insurance Company in Salem (Salem, MA) and started a new marketing initiative under the name MiddleOak®.

We issued our first 529 college savings plan.

The Roth 401(k) plan option was first offered to retirement planning clients and prospects.

2010

We created a dedicated Storm Team to handle the increase in claims and to respond to storms in all regions.

2021

We rolled out the COUNTRY DriverIQ telematics program.

2023

We launched the new Indexed Universal Life (IUL) program that allowed for greater flexibility for clients and enhanced accumulation over a longer period of time.

1942

Farmers Mutual Reinsurance Company was chartered in 1925 by the Illinois Agricultural Association® (IAA) as a reinsurance company for county Farm Bureaus in Illinois. The 1942 logo was a circle with triangle points displaying the IAA's initials.

1945

COUNTRY Life Insurance Company was formed in 1929. To charter, the company asked farmer members to pledge $100 to get the company started. The 1945 logo used stylized descriptive text as its brand.

1972

Prior to 1959, our insurance services (Country Life, Country Mutual, etc.) weren't marketed together. The Country Companies was the first name used to identify all of them. The corporate color was blue, with the C’s often being shown in blue.

1986

In 1979, The Country Companies became simply COUNTRY COMPANIES and the corporate color was changed to green. The new color and hard edged business font reflected our emphasis on financial services in addition to insurance. This 1986 version is a simplified version of a 1982 logo.

2000

The 2000 logo was used as a transition to the oval, a shape preferred by consumer focus groups. The goal of the transition was to make the word COUNTRY more prominent and rely on the oval to make our brand easy for consumers to identify.

2002

The word "Companies" was reduced in size. The tagline "Insurance & Financial Services" was added to help clients identify that we were more than an insurance company.

2008

The next step in our brand development was to use COUNTRY alone in the oval. The word "Financial" took the place of "Insurance & Financial Services" to identify us, making the word COUNTRY and the oval shape even more prominent.

2014

This logo brought "COUNTRY" and "Financial" together to help people who aren't familiar with us understand what we do.

2023

We announced our "Experience more" tagline as a representation of our commitment to our community of clients, employees and representatives, that with us, they experience more.