Aflac Health Insurance

Written by Updated on: December 7, 2009

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About Aflac

American Family Life Assurance Company (Aflac) was founded on Nov. 17, 1955 by three brothers, John, Paul and Bill Amos. In its first year of operation, Aflac had 6,426 policyholders and $388,000 in assets. Today, Aflac is a Fortune 500 company listed on the New York Stock Exchange with over $59 billion.

Wiki Says

Aflac Inc. is the largest provider of supplemental insurance in the United States. It was founded in 1955 and it’s based in Columbus, Georgia. In the United States, Aflac underwrites a range of insurance policies, but is mostly known for its payroll deduction insurance coverage, which pays cash benefits when a policyholder has an accident or illness. In Japan, the company is the second largest overall insurer, largest life insurer and well known for its supplemental medical policies.

Since 2000, the company’s identity has become more widely recognized as the result of commercials featuring the Aflac Duck, who quacks the company’s name in frustration to prospective policyholders. AFLAC’s brand has developed wide recognition with commercials starring the famous Aflac Duck (voiced by Gilbert Gottfried and created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop) on television which started airing in December 1999.

The duck concept and all of the commercials to date have been created by Kaplan Thaler Group, an advertising agency based in New York City. Struggling to come up with a concept to make the big but relatively obscure insurance company’s name memorable, one of the agency’s art directors stumbled upon the duck idea while walking around Central Park at lunchtime uttering, “Aflac, Aflac.” He soon realized how much the company’s name sounded like a duck’s quack. Aflac Duck has now starred in more than 30 commercials.