International Conference on Risk and the Insurance Business in History RIBH 2019 FINAL PROGRAMME (original) (raw)

Evolution of Insurance and Insurance Law

2024

This edition of our insurance law series discusses the evolution of insurance and insurance law. Although the concept of insurance has long existed, the origins of modern insurance contract are found in the practices adopted by Italian merchants from the fourteenth century onwards. Marine risks (the risk of losing ships and cargoes at sea) was the basis for the development of medieval insurance, which dominated insurance business for several years. This chapter traces the evolution of insurance business and insurance law.

British and European Insurance Enterprise in

The history of the American non-life insurance industry has been neglected, certainly by comparison with that of Great Britain and Europe. While life insurance has received some scholarly attention, there are few monographs on any aspect of property insurance in the U.S. during the nineteenth centu • [Armstrong, 1971]. This is surprising. The U.S. became the largest insurance market in the world during the second half of that centu • . The census of 1890 counted over 2,300 fire and transport insurance companies issuing coverage during the 1880s of $120,000 million [U.S. Census, 1890]. By twentieth centu • comparisons, the industry was still relatively small, but it was growing rapidly. Aggregate premium income from property insurance increased by more than three times the rate of national income between 1850 and 1890 [calculated from Armstrong, 1971, p. 67]. It is beyond the scope of this paper to undertake the considerable task of reconstructing the development of this service indu...

Escaping from the State? Historical Paths to Public and Private Insurance

Enterprise & Society, 2020

The history of insurance has been characterized in most countries by the coexistence of a wide range of organizational forms. The reasons for this plethora of vehicles remain unclear, as does the impact of this diversity on the development of insurance around the world. Drawing on the latest research, this paper examines, first, the different functions of the state in relation to insurance in a wide range of national markets from the early modern period to the present century; second, the path-dependent effects that determined the historical distribution of public and private forms of insurance; and third, the relation between public and private insurance and its impact on market development.

Regulatory Regimes and Multinational Insurers before 1914

Business History Review, 2008

At the end of the twentieth century, the global diffusion of one important financial service, insurance, was encouraged by deregulation, but it also encountered difficulties where deregulation remained incomplete and where there were many nonregulatory barriers to entry. International insurance was already well developed before 1914. The growth in the global insurance trade, however, occurred against a background of increasing national regulation and fiscal burdens in many countries, making international business affordable only for the largest companies with the deepest reserves. This paper offers some preliminary estimates of the extent of the international insurance trade during the half-century before the First World War, and assesses the impact of national regulatory regimes and nonregulatory factors on the development of this business. The analysis is placed within the framework of modern theories of regulation and multinational enterprise.