No. 6 for No. 6

George Willard Smith last week decided to heed his own actuarial tables: at 66, he moved from the presidency into the board chairmanship of the New England Mutual Life Insurance Co. Into the presidency went affable, sandy-haired O. (for Oscar) Kelley Anderson, 43, onetime Iowa farm boy and longtime crack investment man.

There have been only five other presidents of 107-year-old New England Mutual, the sixth biggest U.S. mutual life insurance company among those selling only "ordinary" life policies.* Although New England was the first mutual insurance company chartered in the U.S., the Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York, chartered later, opened for business first. Quips Smith: "We were born first, but Mutual of New York walked first."

Southern Charm. During the Civil War, when many another insurance company lost its shirt, New England Mutual prospered by promoting special war-risk policies. After the war, the firm charmed its Southern policyholders back into the fold by permitting them to pay overdue premiums and resume their insurance without new medical examinations.

The company's big crisis came after the crash of '29, when insurance companies were hit along with everyone else. Smith, who had moved up from a vice-presidency into the presidency just after the crash, kept paying full dividends for three years. By thus building up good will, and by relentless plugging of the firm's soundness with an ad he thought up during a Sunday church service ("Seven major depressions have failed to shake the stability of this company"), Smith in 21 years had quadrupled New England Mutual's assets (to $1.1 billion) and increased the insurance in force 2 1/2 times (to $2.8 billion).

Fast Rise. He first met Kelley Anderson five years ago when Anderson, raising money for Boston's Community Chest fund, hit him for a contribution. Smith was impressed by Kelley Anderson's background, and two years later Anderson joined New England as a director. Anderson, who first learned finance from his farmer-banker father, worked his way through college, then became an errand boy in an engineering firm because "there wasn't much choice about jobs in 1929."

Three years later, at 25, he and four friends chipped in $50 apiece to organize Boston Fund, Inc., which Kelley ran when his co-founders withdrew, and which now has assets of $52 million. The next year he helped set up Consolidated Investment Trust (current assets: $23 million). After that he moved quickly into directorships and trusteeships of nine companies and charitable organizations. Despite his fast rise, Kelley Anderson has a modest explanation of his success: "I've always been fortunate in getting to work with older and more experienced men in new jobs."

* The first five: New York Life, Northwestern Mutual, Mutual Life of New York, Mutual Benefit Life and Penn Mutual.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.