Globe Life (GL) FY2025 results: revenue $6.0 billion, up 3.7% on the year

Globe Life is an insurance holding company that sells individual life insurance and supplemental health insurance to lower middle-income and middle-income households in the United States. The products are individual policies, and the company describes the lower middle-income to middle-income market it serves as underserved. It was incorporated in Delaware in 1979 and says it has served the same market with essentially the same products for over 60 years.

Five divisions, each with its own way of reaching the customer

The filing presents the business by primary marketing distribution channel, and says each channel operates in a niche market with products designed for it. Direct to Consumer, written by Globe Life And Accident Insurance Company in McKinney, Texas, sells individual life and supplemental health limited-benefit cover, including juvenile and senior life and Medicare Supplement, nationwide through direct mail, electronic media and insert media, with no agent involved. American Income Life, in Waco, Texas, sells life and supplemental health to working families through an average of 11,920 producing agents in the United States, Canada and New Zealand. Liberty National, also in McKinney, sells in the home and at the worksite through an average of 3,846 agents. Family Heritage, in Cleveland, Ohio, sells supplemental limited-benefit health cover through an average of 1,527 agents. United American, in McKinney, sells Medicare supplemental health cover to Medicare beneficiaries and some cover to people under 65, through 4,396 independent producing agents.

The agents of American Income, Liberty National and Family Heritage are independent contractors who sell exclusively for Globe Life. United American's health business goes through independent agents and brokers.

What the policies are

Life is nonparticipating ordinary life: traditional whole life, term, and other. Interest-sensitive whole life is no longer sold. Of annualised life premium in force at the end of 2025, traditional whole life was 71 percent, term 22 percent, other 6 percent and the residual interest-sensitive book 1 percent. The company had 14,284,789 life policies in force.

Health is Medicare Supplement plus limited-benefit supplemental products covering accident, cancer, critical illness, heart, intensive care and other conditions. These are designed to sit on top of cover the buyer already holds rather than to replace it: Medicare Supplement pays deductibles and co-payments that traditional fee-for-service Medicare does not, and is standardised by federal regulation. Of annualised health premium in force at the end of 2025, limited-benefit plans were 54 percent and Medicare Supplement 46 percent.

Where the money is made

Globe Life reports its operations as two insurance product line segments, life and supplemental health, each subdivided by distribution channel, plus an investment segment that supports them. The measure it uses for the product lines is underwriting margin; for the investment segment it is excess investment income. Premium rates are set using assumptions about future mortality, morbidity, persistency, investment income, expenses and target profit margins, drawn from the company's own experience, and profit turns on how far actual experience departs from those assumptions and on investment income above what the policy reserves require. The company says it is able to operate at lower policy acquisition and administrative expense than peer companies, which lets it hold competitive rates while keeping higher underwriting margins.

Underwriting, reserves and reinsurance

Applications are assessed using the form itself and, where needed, telephone interviews, inspection reports, pharmacy data, motor vehicle records, medical and non-medical questions, doctors' statements and examinations. A policy can then be issued as applied for, at a different rating, with a rider, with reduced cover, or declined. Most health policies are issued on a guaranteed-renewable basis, so reserves are held against them as well as against the life book.

Globe Life cedes risk to third-party reinsurers, and notes that ceding does not release it from its obligation to the policyholder. It also uses wholly owned Bermuda subsidiaries for reinsurance between its own companies, which eliminates in consolidation and changes nothing in the group accounts. Late in 2025 it received licence approval for a new affiliated Bermuda reinsurer, Globe Life Re Ltd.

Investments

About 86 percent of invested assets, at fair value, were fixed maturities at the end of 2025. The rest is commercial mortgage loans, limited partnerships, equity securities and short-term investments.

From Globe Life's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025. The filing

Written from the 10-K filed 25 February 2026: read the full 10-K.