Saturday 9 August 2014

The first life insurance in England

clinical negligence claim
Image courtesy of PANPOTE / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
The first known documented life insurance contract was concluded on June 18, 1583, with the Office of Insurance, based in London, and the insured was a citizen of London, William Gybbons. The agreement provides for the sum insured in the amount of 382 pounds, 6 shillings and 8 pence, to be paid in case of death of the insured within 12 months from the contract.

In the sixteenth century in England, there were concluded life insurances associated with the loans, and the amount of insurance was established in the amount of the debt. Further development of life insurance, which occurred at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was highly due to the wider use of Actuarial founded the science of probability theory , also developed the first signs of mortality.


In 1699 in England, the first commercial insurance Society of Assurances for Widows and Orphans was created, which dealt exclusively with insurance in case of death. In the eighteenth century a new insurance company opened in England, but also in the USA and France.