Mutual Company

You might want to sit down for this one.

A mutual company is a private company owned by the same people it serves. That’s right: you’re the partial-boss, so you get some profits (probably dividends), and you get the goods it produces, too. The power...the power….of a cooperative (another name for a mutual company).

Mutual companies—where the customers are the owners—are common in the insurance industry, the savings-n-loans industry, and in the banking industry (like community banks and credit unions). People like mutual companies since they get to reap the profits from that which they sewed, and because they can form the company how they want it. For instance, some mutual companies are super niche, with everyone in them also in that niche. Like if a bunch of skydivers got together and created insurance policies for skydivers. Made for skydivers, by skydivers.