Bharti – AXA Life Insurance (Training Report)
9
HISTORY OF INSURANCE
Insurance has been known to exist in some form or other since 3000 BC. The
Chinese traders, traveling treacherous river rapids would distribute their
goods among several vessels, so that the loss form any one vessel being
lost, would be partial and shared, and not total. The Babylonian traders would
agree to pay additional sums to lenders, as the price for writing off the loans,
in case of the shipment being stolen. The inhabitants of Rhodes adopted the
principle of general average of ‘general average’, whereby, if goods are
shipped together, the owners would bear the losses in proportion, if loss
occurs, due to jettisoning during distress. {Captains of ships caught in storms,
would throw away some of the cargo to reduce the weight and restore
balance. Such throwing away is called jettisoning} The Greeks had started
benevolent societies in the late 7 th century AD, to take care of the funeral
and families of members ho died. The great fire of London in 1666,in which
more than 13000 house were lost, gave a boost to insurance and the first fire
insurance company, called the fire office, was started in 1680.
The origins of insurance business as in vogue at present, is traced to the
Lloyd’s Coffee House in London. Traders, who used to gather in the Lloyd’s
coffee house in London, agreed to share the losses to their goods while being
carried by ships. The losses used to occur because of pirates who robbed on
the high seas of because of bad weather spoiling the goods or sinking the
ship. In India, insurance began in 1818 with life insurance being transacted
by an English company, the Oriental Life Insurance Co. in 1870 in Mumbai.
This was followed by the Bharat Insurance co. in 1896 in Delhi, the Empire of
India in 1897 in Mumbai, The United India in Chennai, the National, the
National Indian and Hindustan Cooperative in Kolkata.
Later, were established the cooperative Assurance in Lahore, the Bombay
Life (originally called the swadeshi life), the India Mercantile, the new India
and the Jupiter in Mumbai and the Lakshmi in New Delhi. These were all
Indian companies started as a result of the swadeshi movement in the early
1900s. By the year 1956, when life insurance business was nationalized and
the life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) was formed on1st September
1956, there were 170 companies and 75 provident fund societies transacting
life business in India. After the amendments to the relevant laws in 1999, the