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LNC, Lincoln National

A life insurer, collecting premiums for decades and earning a spread on the reserves it invests until claims fall due.

For instance, our term products and UL products containing secondary guarantees subject to the NAIC RBC framework require reserves calculated pursuant to the Valuation of Life Insurance Policies Model Regulation ("XXX") and Actuarial Guideline XXXVIII ("AG38"), respectively.

Included in the LOCs issued as of December 31, 2025, was $5 million of long-dated LOCs issued to support inter-company reinsurance agreements for term products and UL products containing secondary guarantees.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K

LNC · Lincoln National

The business

What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.

Revenue · FY2025

$18.2B

−1.1% YoY · 1% 5-yr CAGR

Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average

Revenue $19.3B 5-yr avg $17.7B

Return on equity 21% 5-yr avg 17%

Return on assets 0.5% 5-yr avg 0.5%

The business in brief

read the 10-K →

What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.

What moves the needle: The spread on the float and the growth in book value. What decides it: the gap between what the invested reserves earn and what is credited to policyholders, the mortality and fee margins on top, and the scale of the float against equity. Benefits exceed premiums by design, so a P&C combined ratio is the wrong lens; the risks are interest rates and reserve adequacy. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on cyclicality & demand, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
Is it a good business?: A life insurer is read on the spread it earns on a large float and the growth in book value, not a combined ratio: benefits exceed premiums by design, since claims fall due decades after the premium and are funded by the investment income on accumulated reserves. Book value per share has slipped about 0% a year across the record, though much of that swing is rising rates marking the bond portfolio down through other comprehensive income rather than economic loss. The float runs about 0.6× equity, the leverage that magnifies the spread. Whether the spread holds as rates move, and whether the reserves prove adequate, are what the 10-K decides, not an earnings multiple.

Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.

The record

Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.

Most recent quarterly filing 10-Q filed Jul 30, 2026 Source at SEC EDGAR →

Revenue up 12.3% year over year; operating income up 93.8%

figures computed from the filing's XBRL

The record, 2016–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left

2016’16	2017’17	2018’18	2019’19	2020’20	2021’21	2022’22	2023’23	2024’24	2025’25	TTMTTMJun 2026
											Income statement
$13.3B	$14.3B	$16.4B	$17.3B	$17.4B	$17.8B	$18.8B	$15.0B	$18.4B	$18.2B	$19.3B	RevenueRevenue
$3.0B	$3.3B	$4.6B	$5.5B	$5.4B	$11.7B	$11.7B	$9.1B	$11.8B	$12.2B	$12.2B	Premiums earnedPremiums
$4.9B	$5.0B	$5.1B	$5.2B	$5.5B	$6.1B	$5.5B	$5.9B	$5.5B	$6.1B	$6.4B	Investment incomeInv. inc.
$1.5B	$1.1B	$1.9B	$919M	$423M	$4.6B	$1.7B	($1.1B)	$4.0B	$1.3B	—	Pretax incomePretax
$1.2B	$2.1B	$1.6B	$886M	$499M	$3.8B	$1.4B	($752M)	$3.3B	$1.2B	$2.4B	Net incomeNet inc.
18%	—	13%	4%	—	19%	21%	—	19%	12%	17%	Effective tax rateTax rate
											Cash flow & returns
$1.3B	$788M	$1.9B	($2.7B)	$534M	($217M)	$3.6B	($2.1B)	($2.0B)	($167M)	($1.3B)	Operating cash flowOp. cash
8%	12%	11%	4%	2%	19%	27%	-11%	40%	11%	21%	Return on equityROE
7%	10%	9%	3%	1%	17%	21%	−15%	36%	8%	18%	Retained to equityRetained/eq
$238M	$262M	$289M	$303M	$311M	$319M	$310M	$305M	$307M	$325M	$344M	Dividends paidDiv. paid
$879M	$725M	$900M	$550M	$275M	$1.1B	$550M	$0	$0	—	—	BuybacksBuybacks
($3.7B)	($4.2B)	($5.8B)	($5.5B)	($9.5B)	($3.6B)	($11.6B)	($3.3B)	$821M	($4.0B)	—	Investing cash flowInv. cash
$2.0B	$2.3B	$4.6B	$8.4B	$8.1B	$4.7B	$8.8B	$5.4B	$3.6B	$7.9B	—	Financing cash flowFin. cash
($424M)	($1.1B)	$717M	$218M	($855M)	$904M	$731M	$22M	$2.4B	$3.7B	—	Change in cashΔ cash
											Balance sheet
$106.7B	$113.1B	$115.2B	$133.7B	$154.0B	$153.9B	$131.7B	$124.3B	$129.9B	$138.9B	$143.3B	Investments (total)Investments
$2.2B	$2.2B	$5.3B	$5.6B	$5.9B	$6.3B	$6.5B	—	—	—	$6.5B	Float (reserves)Float
$261.6B	$281.8B	$298.1B	$334.8B	$365.9B	$386.9B	$334.3B	$372.4B	$390.8B	$417.2B	$429.8B	Total assetsAssets
$247.1B	$264.4B	$283.8B	$315.1B	$343.2B	$366.2B	$329.2B	$365.5B	$382.6B	$406.3B	—	Total liabilitiesTotal liab.
$14.5B	$17.3B	$14.3B	$19.7B	$22.7B	$19.9B	$5.1B	$6.9B	$8.3B	$10.9B	$11.3B	Shareholders’ equityEquity
											Per share
237M	226M	220M	202M	194M	190M	173M	171M	173M	186M	196M	Shares out (diluted)Shares
$5.03	$9.19	$7.47	$4.38	$2.57	$19.92	$7.86	$-4.40	$18.92	$6.33	$12.01	EPS (diluted)EPS
$1.00	$1.16	$1.32	$1.50	$1.60	$1.68	$1.80	$1.79	$1.77	$1.75	$1.75	Dividends / shareDiv/sh
$61.13	$76.57	$65.36	$97.42	$116.73	$105.02	$29.54	$40.37	$47.78	$58.61	$57.77	Book value / shareBVPS

Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded

	9-yr	5-yr
Revenue / share	+6.4%/yr	+1.8%/yr
EPS	+2.6%/yr	+19.8%/yr
Dividends / share	+6.3%/yr	+1.8%/yr
Book value / share	−0.5%/yr	−12.9%/yr

III

Quality & stewardship

Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.

Owner’s Scorecard

FY2025 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →

Is it a good business?

Return on equity 11%

Solid

Net income $1.2B ÷ equity $10.9B

Industry peers: median 11%

What this means
What it earns on shareholders' capital, the underwriting result plus what the float earns invested. Durably above the ~10% cost of equity is what compounds book value.
Spread over crediting 1.3%

Earning more than it credits

(Investment income $6.1B − interest credited $3.7B) ÷ float $179.4B

What this means
The life insurer's engine in one figure: what the float earns invested, less what is credited to policyholders, as a share of the float. A durable positive spread is the business; a negative one means the promises cost more than the portfolio produces.

The float and book value

Float $179.4B

16.5× equity

Policy benefits + deposits + guarantees − recoverables − DAC − receivables = $179.4B

What this means
Money held against future claims and invested in the meantime. Buffett's insight was that good underwriting makes this float cost less than nothing, a pool of other people's money the owners earn on. Basis note: recoverables deduction unavailable; DAC deduction unavailable; receivables deduction unavailable. The larger it is against equity, the more that leverage works, for better or worse.
Book value per share $59

the compounding scoreboard

Equity $10.9B ÷ 186M shares

What this means
A life insurer is judged the way Berkshire is, by the growth in book value per share over the years as the spread on the float and the mortality and fee margins compound into equity. This is the level today; the record below shows whether it has grown. Note that reported book value swings with interest rates, which mark the bond portfolio up and down through other comprehensive income.

The reserves

Reserve development —

Not enough data

What this means
Not disclosed in the filings' structured data — the absence is itself worth knowing on a business whose product is a promise.

All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.

Acquisitions & goodwill

from the balance sheet & the 10-year cash-flow record

Goodwill grows only when a company acquires and falls only when it concedes it overpaid. The size of that bet, the cash put into buying rather than building, and how much has already been written off.

Goodwill$1.1B0% of all assets; the premium carried on the balance sheet for businesses acquired

Against book equity10%goodwill is this share of book equity; the rest is the company’s own retained and paid-in capital

Cash spent acquiring$1.4Bover 10 years buying other businesses

$1.5B written down across 2 years (2017, 2022): goodwill the company has already conceded it overpaid for, charged against earnings. A write-down costs no cash (the cash went out when the deal was signed), but it is management marking its own past judgment to market.

Goodwill, acquired intangibles and equity from the latest balance sheet; acquisition spend and write-downs summed across the 10-year record, from the company's own filings.

Management, ownership & pay

read the proxy →

From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.

Fiscal year	Chief executive	Pay, as filed	“Actually paid”	Net income
2021	Dennis Glass	$16.8M	$26.0M	$3.8B
2022	Dennis Glass	$6.5M	−$15.0M	$1.4B
2022	Ms. Cooper	$9.1M	$2.3M	$1.4B
2023	Ms. Cooper	$13.4M	$10.6M	($752M)
2024	Ms. Cooper	$15.9M	$15.3M	$3.3B
2025	Ms. Cooper	$28.0M	$46.0M	$1.2B

Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Net income is the whole business's, as filed, for the same fiscal years.

Insider ownership0.6%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
CEO pay ratio277:1
What the chief earns for every dollar the median employee makes, per the 2026 proxy. A high ratio alone settles nothing; some businesses are genuinely top-heavy in scarce skill. A runaway figure is where Buffett starts asking whether the board is doing its job.

What an owner would ask, FY2025

read the 10-K →

Which reported numbers are a judgment call?
Management names Income taxes, Credit & receivables as critical estimates
each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →

The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.

Peers, Insurance — Life & Health

The same industry, side by side on the spread-and-book-value lens. Each column names the period it is read over, and a median resting on fewer than three years carries that count beside it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each figure against.

Company	Revenuelatest FY, USD	ROEmedian over the record	Yield on floatmedian over the record	Return on assetsmedian over the record
SLFSun Life Financial Inc.	$29.9B	12%	3.1%1y	0.9%
ATHSAthene Holding Ltd	$25.7B	14%	3.7%	0.9%
RGAReinsurance Group of America	$23.7B	9%	8.7%	1.0%
CRBGCorebridge Financial Inc.	$19.0B	14%	5.1%	0.4%
LNCLincoln National	$18.2B	11%	4.0%	0.4%
PUKPrudential Public Limited Company	$11.5B	10%	—	0.4%
VOYAVoya Financial Inc.	$8.2B	11%	5.0%	0.4%
GNWGenworth Financial Inc	$7.3B	2%	4.9%	0.3%
Group median	—	11%	4.9%	0.4%

The price

What a price has to assume.

What the price implies

price / tangible book

An insurer is worth a multiple of its tangible book value, and the multiple it deserves is set by the return it earns on that book. Type today’s price; we show what you would be paying against what Lincoln National’s record justifies.

Today’s price $

The assumptions Cost of equity 10% Long-term growth 3%

Tangible book / share, delivered−15%/yr’20→’25

The justified multiple is (return on tangible equity − growth) ÷ (cost of equity − growth). An insurer earning exactly its cost of equity is worth about one times tangible book; the premium above that prices each point of durable excess return. A higher cost of equity lowers the justified multiple for an insurer.

Enter a price above to run it.

Price / tangible book—

Justified by the return—

Normalized return on tangible equity13%

Price / book—

Earnings yield—

P/E (3-yr avg ’23–’25)—

Graham’s price gate—

Graham applied the same standards to financial enterprises (Intelligent Investor ch.14): the 15× multiple cap on averaged earnings, and P/E times price-to-book at most 22.5. The gate marks the bargain-hunter’s floor, not a verdict.

Tangible book $10.2B on 191M shares, a 13% normalized return on it. The dials set the multiple such a return would justify; your price sets the multiple you are paying. It assumes the insurer keeps earning that return; an underwriting cycle, a reserve shortfall or a bad year on the float changes it, which is what the record and the 10-K are for.

Weigh LNC against another business →

Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Lincoln National (LNC), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/LNC, data as of 2026-07-18.

Manual order: ← LMT its page in the Manual LNG →

Industry order: ← JXN the Insurance — Life & Health chapter MET →