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Insurance
Insurance probably predates written records and logs. In ancient times, before currency, throughout the whole of Europe, the most primitive form of insurance existed. For instance, if your home or dwelling collapsed, burned to the ground or just ceased being, the whole tribe or village would help to rebuild your property. If a representative from any family in that group of people failed to help out, then the consequence would be no village support if they ever needed any form of support. This can be equated to a very form of insurance.
Insurance was first made part of the actual monetary economy by the ancient Chinese. The merchants of the time, when transporting goods, would spread their goods across many vehicles, such as boats when crossing treacherous seas and bodies and of water. This would minimize losses should one boat be lost at sea. In effected they where taking out insurance by 'not putting all their eggs in one basket'. This affected the monetary system as a levy would have to be paid on each ship hired or bought to transport the goods. This can be dated back to as early as the third century and was the basis for modern day insurance.
Insurance being recorded roughly one hundred years later, in the second century B.C. The Babylonians actually recorded a system which was recorded in The Code of Hammurabi which was common practice amongst traders and shippers across and around the Mediterranean. A merchant would obtain a loan to ship his goods. He would pay an extra charge, or an insurance, on top of this loan so that if anything happened en route and the goods were not delivered, he would not have to repay the loan. Again an advancement in insurance.
Insurance of a non commercial nature can be traced to Achaemenian royalty. Residents within the realm where given the chance to offer gifts on the first of the year. If this gift was valued at more than one gold coin then it would be entered into an early form of insurance log. If, in that following year, that subject needed to construct a new property, have a child marry or need to organise a great feast, then the Monarchy would pay out twice the amount that was entered into the records. The earliest form of mass scale people's insurance.
Insurance payouts on death, or health or life insurance was introduced by the Romans and the Greeks as early as six hundred A.D. Guilds named 'benevolent societies' where introduced. Citizens where asked to pay a small regular fee into the society, or an insurance premium, and upon a death or injury in the family, funds where dispersed to cover the funeral expenses. Similar schemes or cooperatives where also established in England in the middle ages, which would not only cover death, but also any other form of misfortune suffered by a coop member. These coops became the foundations of what we today call insurance.
Insurance not bundled as a package to traders or in a cooperative became the mainstream during the period between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. The inhabitants of Genoa where the first to be empowered to buy separate forms of insurance which where backed by pledges of land or estate, thus separating payments from investments and paving the way forward for mariners which laid the basis for London, which was a thriving centre of commerce to introduce specialised policies for both commercial and also general insurance.
During the late 1680's, a certain Edward Lloyd, a cafe owner in London, whose establishment was the place for shipping news and weather forecasts and was frequented by many of the sailors and mariners of the day started to underwrite and insure cargoes and journeys. Lloyds of London still exists today and is the oldest company in the world when it comes to insurance.
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