LOS ANGELES (AP) — Insurers including The Hartford Financial, Prudential Financial Inc. and Lincoln National Corp. have received preliminary approval to get billions of dollars from the government's financial industry rescue programme.

Treasury Department spokesman Andrew Williams confirmed yesterday that Ameriprise Financial Inc. and Principal Financial Group Inc. also are among insurers receiving preliminary investment approval. He declined to disclose the amount of investment each company will receive.

The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. said separately yesterday it was approved for a $3.4 billion Treasury investment.

"These life insurers met the requirements for the Capital Purchase Programme because of their bank holding company status and each applied for CPP capital investments by the deadline of November 14, 2008," Williams said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

He said the insurers are among the hundreds of financial institutions in the programme's pipeline that will be reviewed and funded as appropriate on a rolling basis.

"These funds would further fortify our capital resources and provide us with additional financial flexibility during one of the most volatile market climates in our nation's history," said Ramani Ayer, chairman and chief executive of The Hartford, in a statement.

All terms of the Treasury investment in the Hartford, Connecticut-based life and property and casualty insurer are subject to final negotiations and approval.

Shares of The Hartford rose $2.19, or 17.4 percent, to close yesterday at $14.75. The stock was up another $1.45, or 9.8 percent to $16.20 in aftermarket electronic trading.

Philadelphia-based Lincoln National was up 85 cents, or 5.2 percent, to $17.09 after hours following 13 percent jump in the regular session. Newark, New Jersey-based Prudential Financial tacked on $1.31, or 3.3 percent, to $40.68 after the market's close.

The Hartford and Lincoln National, two of the nation's largest life insurers, and several others applied to become thrift holding companies last fall. Regulators approved applications earlier this year from those two firms. Hartford said in January that it expected to be eligible for between $1.1 billion and $3.4 billion in bailout money.

The bailout fund approved by Congress last year, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Programme, or TARP, was intended to help banks weather the credit crunch, though it has also been used to make loans to auto companies and insurance giant American International Group Inc.

Life insurers own 18 percent of all corporate bonds so aiding them is consistent with the bailout program's goal of unclogging credit markets. The industry's major financial challenges include balance sheets clogged by illiquid assets and escalating liabilities to policy holders who bought in to this decade's explosion in the variable annuities market.

Variable annuities pay out according to market performance, but often include guarantees of minimum payouts. That means declining stock markets can put a cash pinch on insurance companies that wrote too many of the policies.