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Friday 15 January 2016

Life insurance

The first life insurance policy in Britain for which we have details was arranged by Richard Martin, an alderman of London. He arranged the policy on June 18, 1583 for a salter, one William Gibbons. The premium was eight per cent, and the term was 12 months.

The first company to offer life insurance was the Amicable Society for a Perpetual Assurance Office, founded in London in 1706 by Sir Thomas Allen and William Talbot, Bishop of Oxford. In a clue to life expectancy in those days, the Amicable Society for a Perpetual Assurance Office insured people aged only between 15 and 45.  The Amicable Society started with 2000 members.

Each Amicable Society member made an annual payment per share on one to three shares. At the end of the year a portion of the "amicable contribution" was divided among the wives and children of deceased members, in proportion to the amount of shares the heirs owned.

Amicable Society for a Perpetual Assurance Office, established in 1706, was the first life insurance company in the world.

The Presbyterian Synods of New York and Philadelphia founded the life insurance company "Presbyterian Ministers Fund for Life Insurance" on January 11, 1759. The first ever life insurance outfit in America, it was established to help Presbyterian women whose husbands had died. Episcopalian priests created a comparable relief fund in 1769. Between 1787 and 1837, over 24 life insurance companies were started, but fewer than a quarter of them survived.

General Custer took out a $5,000 life insurance policy shortly before the Battle of Little Big Horn.

In 1890, UK's Answers magazine offered readers free insurance against railway accidents. You got £200 if you died.


In post-war Japan, people would sign a life insurance contract. And go straight out, and kill themselves under the nearest train. Eventually, the life insurance companies started putting in one-year exemption clauses in their policies, so that people who would sign in must wait one year before killing themselves to get the money. As a result, the suicide rate spiked on the thirteenth month of the contract.

The Apollo 11 astronauts didn't have life insurance, as they couldn't afford the $50,000 policy, so they signed hundreds of autographs and sent them to their families to sell if they died.

Christa McAuliffe was gifted with a $1 million life insurance policy a week before the Challenger disaster in honor of her being the first teacher in space.

The most valuable life insurance policy taken out is for $201 million (£121 million), on the life of an anonymous but well-known U.S. billionaire. Dovi Frances, the international financier who negotiated the policy, said he used 24 insurance companies to spread the risk.

Walmart used to take out life insurance policies on their employees and keep the payouts when they died; the practice was colloquially known as "Dead Peasant Insurance".

In South Korea Samsung offers life insurance.

Source Daily Mail

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