Insurance is protection against financial loss. In order to protect his future, a person may join a group in which each member pays a certain sum of money regularly with the guarantee that the group will pay any loss suffered by any member. This is known as a mutual company. Or, he may pay an organized commercial company which carries a large amount of capital to take the responsibility of any loss that he suffers.

There are many, many kinds of insurance in effect today and we won’t attempt to describe them all. A partial list includes life, fire, health, accident, automobile, title, liability, burglary, and even crop, rain, and earthquake insurance.

Since one of the earliest business activities that involved a great deal of risk was shipping, marine insurance was probably the first kind of insurance. There are records of ancient law that indicate the existence of marine insurance as early as 300 B.C. in Rome. Some historians believe that Claudius, the Roman emperor, originated the insurance of ships in A.D.43. It is probable that in the twelfth century the Lombard merchants of Italy introduced marine insurance to German merchants, and by the thirteenth century, this form of insurance was widely used in Europe.

In 1583 in London, a group of men insured the life of William Gibbons, a sea captain, who was probably the first man ever insured. Lloyd’s of London, the most famous insurance association in the world, was begun in 1689 in a coffee house kept by Edward Lloyd in Tower Street, when patrons interested in shipping clubbed together under a mutual plan. In 1734 Lloyd’s men began issuing Lloyd’s List, which gives information about ships and crews. It is issued today by the shipping industry all over the world.

The first life insurance company in the world, as far as records show, was the Amicable Society for a Perpetual Assurance, founded in London in 1705. The first life insurance company in the United States was the Presbyterian Ministers’ Fund of Philadelphia, founded in 1759.

The first fire insurance company in the country was the Friendly Society for the Mutual Insurance of Houses against Fire, founded in 1735 in Charleston, South Carolina.