[1] In the early years, the company's business consisted primarily of low-premium, low-benefit "sick and accident" policies,[1] which is a form of disability insurance that paid the holder a stated amount for every week he was unable to work due to illness or injury.

The industrial life insurance plans were usually for small face amounts: typically $250, $500, or $1,000 in the early years.

The company gradually expanded its operations to the south-eastern seaboard and eventually covered most of the continental U.S. except the northeast, the Rocky Mountain states, and the Pacific Northwest.

It also began to write "ordinary life" insurance to better risks, such as middle-class office workers, religious ministers, accountants, and bankers.

Its studios were at first in the National Life office building in downtown Nashville at Seventh and Union Streets.

Like many of them, National Life survived by offering its clients policy loans against the plans' cash values.

The new National Life building, across the street from the Tennessee State Capitol, had 30 stories and was both considerably larger and located on higher terrain, so it appeared to be grander than its rival, as intended.

In 1969, a plan was announced to build a theme park on the property of Rudy's Farm, a sausage company located in the Pennington Bend of the Cumberland River.

In the early 1980s, Houston's American General Corporation (AGC), another insurance holding company, announced a hostile takeover bid for NLT.