At the present day with all the risks that are there, all of consider in getting an assurance policy at one time or the other in our lives. It can be a life assurance or property coverage or even a professional indemnity policy depending on why you decided to take the cover in the first place.
It would, therefore, be interesting to look into when and who started all this.
We know that a coverage policy is a contract between an insurer and a customer where the risk of some action happening or the consequence of an inaction is born by the service provider in lieu of a premium. Greater the risk, the higher the premium.
Even in the early days, when people were engaged in the sale of goods, it was necessary to formulate a mechanism through which the risk can be transferred to another party. Of course, it was not as sophisticated as the cargo insurance company we have today but, nevertheless, it was a good start.
The Babylonians who were masters in trade were one of the first civilizations to come up with a notion related to the policies that would transfer the risks associated with the transmission of goods from one place to another. It is said that the fist written insurance policy is also found from the Babylonian civilization depicting how far sighted they were.
The Chinese are also credited with giving rise to ideas that distributed the risk such as sending parts of the consignment in different vessels to avoid the whole getting destroyed at once.
Health and life coverages are not as new as you think either. The benevolent societies introduced by the Greek and Roman civilizations laid the foundations of the life assurances we see today.
The developed form of policy covers we see today are said to have originated from Europe with the fisrt known assurance company based in Italy and many other newer forms of policies such as inland transit insurance Hong Kong were also introduced in a more refined form by the Europeans.
Even the fire assurances that are so very common these days were founded in Europe after the great fire of London that went on for a long time in the 1660’s.
However, even though Europe was the birthplace for many varieties of covers, Massachusetts, a state in the United States is credited with being the first for developing a standardized policy for the writing of fire insurance policies.
The regulation of assurance companies were started in the 1900’s with the business of granting assurance policies were becoming a lucrative business venture.
Thus, assurance policies keeps on growing and being refined overtime to better assist the clients with the transfer of risk associated with many business ventures and the day to day lives.