The Treasury Department will soon auction its warrants in two big insurance companies, The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. and Lincoln National Corp., the agency announced today.

The auctions are expected to occur within a few weeks and would represent the completion of the companies' exit from the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

This will mark Treasury's first warrant auction since it released its mid-year report detailing the sales of its warrants in the first half of 2010. The department has earned $3 billion so far this year from selling warrants, which give the holders the right to buy a share of stock in a company, at a predetermined price, some time in the future.

Hartford Financial Services repaid its $3.4 billion TARP aid on March 31, and Lincoln National repaid its $950 million on June 30.

In return for government aid, participants in the Capital Purchase Program typically issued the government a special class of preferred stock, plus warrants to purchase their common stock.

Treasury holds 52,093,973 warrants for Hartford Financial Services shares, with an exercise price of $9.79. The company's stock closed Tuesday at $21.62 a share, off 89 cents.

Treasury's 13,049,451 Lincoln National warrants have an exercise price of $10.92. That company's shares ended the day at $24.91, off $1.18.

Even with the declines, the warrants in the two companies could be converted to shares at a combined profit of more than $700 million.

The two companies' participation in TARP's Capital Purchase Program was controversial because, unlike all other  participants, they are insurance companies and not banks.

The companies only became eligible for TARP when each purchased a small thrift. TARP funding is based on the size of the bank holding company, not the underlying financial institution, so the two insurers became eligible for billions as a result of their relatively small investments.