There was a time when no one compensated you if, for example, your home burned down. Insurance protects assets in exchange for a fee and is currently essential for any person or company.
Throughout history, many peoples have tried to establish systems in which through a payment the insured could be insured against any risk or contingency. Today insurance is common and there are many companies. For example, companies like Verti have different coverage to protect all types of assets.
The first to establish a kind of insurance were the Egyptians around 2,225 BC through the creation of associations in which a fee was paid so that when they died, the rest of their members would pay for their expensive funeral rites. A kind of primitive “death insurance” to cover all expenses.
The Babylonians also established a kind of cooperative payment in case of losses in the caravans in the desert, They even created a loan to merchants to pay the guarantee if a ship sank on their commercial voyages.
The first official form of insurance was the Phoenicians who created the first companies in the sector related to maritime trade. If a merchant ship did not arrive at port, its economic value was returned based on the merchandise transported in exchange for a payment being made before the ship left.
In Greece most of the free men had a mutuality to deal with the flight of slaves. There were even associations that created a common fund with monthly contributions from their members to assist the victims of a catastrophe and be able to meet funeral expenses.
In Rome, the “Roman collegia” were also created, which were groups of professionals who defended their interests. They paid a monthly fee to be protected against any unforeseen event, to cover funeral expenses or to defend themselves from an enemy.
The first policy on record is dated 1347. It was drawn up and signed in Genoa to insure against possible accidents, shipwrecks or pirate assaults on the merchant ship Santa Bárbara that covered the journey from Genoa to Mallorca. A policy that also protected them in the event that the goods arrived late at the port.
In addition, there is evidence that in the fourteenth century there was a mixed insurance, merchandise and life. This insurance covered boat trips from the Cadiz of Puerto de Santa María to Barcelona and insured the lives of the slaves that it considered as merchandise.
But it was not until the seventeenth century that insurance emerged on a high level. It was from 1666 after the great fire of London that lasted three days and destroyed more than ten thousand houses and 90 churches. A year later, fire insurance companies were created that, for a small fee, protected the insured in the event that such a disaster were to occur again.
As a curiosity, he points out that the first general insurance company had its own fire department. A banking entity guaranteed the agreement and made the annual interest of the contracted guarantee proportional to the value of the insured property.
In 1711 the London Insurance Corporation and the Royal Exchange Insurance Company were born in England, insuring any property. In its offices a society of tacit agreements without statutes was born in which a conspiratorial look or a handshake was enough. The complexity of the goods that had to be insured meant that the printed contract had to be created later.
As a last curiosity, it should also be noted that the first car insurance in history was signed on February 1, 1898 by the Travelers Insurance company. It covered liability expenses only in the event that the vehicle collided with a rider or a horse-drawn cart because the great revolution that the automobile industry was going to bring was not yet counted.
