A Brief History of Insurance: Part 5 Post Renaissance Europe

More today from Insurance Blog for you scholars of Insurance as we take you into Post Renaissance Europe and the Great Fire of London in part five of A Brief History of Insurance:
In previous articles within this series we have discovered that forms of risk management have existed for well over seven thousand years with the ancient Chinese cultures kicking things off, before the Babylonian King Hammurabi laid down the first recorded insurance laws.
These laws, grounded in solid economic common sense spread across the trading nations of the time to land in the Mediterranean where they refined by first the Greeks and then the Romans. After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, once again it was a sea faring merchant empires that shaped the further development of Insurance.

Nightclub Insurance Risks – Remembering Summerland

Times have changed, fashions have changed, the music has changed and the dances have changed, even Insurance Blog has changed; but the risks to nightclubs remain as powerful as ever since Britain’s worst ever nightclub disaster, which killed more than 50 clubbers and seriously injured over 80 others, 38 years ago at the Summerland Resort Complex on the Isle of Man in August 1973.
The Summerland complex was opened 40 years ago in May 1971 in Douglas on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea.
The 3.5 acre resort was cut into the cliff on the promenade and claimed to be the biggest and most innovative indoor entertainment centre in the World, providing artificial sunshine all year round for the holiday resort. 
The aim was to attract British holidaymakers to the Island to compete with the threat posed by the rapid development of package holidays to Spain, that were becoming ever popular with the public.
The Summerland Resort was a spectacular success…..until it’s destruction by fire.

FSA To Clampdown On Insurance Selling On The Internet In The UK

The FSA may well have the axe hanging over it’s head, be over-populated by a bunch of pen pushers and bureaucrats, culpable for the restriction in insurance products and markets available and be responsible for failing to avert the recession caused by the banks, but…….
Insurance Blog will be the first to admit that the FSA in it’s swansong is at least trying to do the right thing, with some notable recent successes in prosecutions and forcing the banks to heel over the mis-selling of payment protection insurance.
Those small insurance brokers, insurance agents, consultants and intermediaries whose rising FSA authorisation costs and annual fees have helped fund the Financial Services Compensation Scheme to pay for the banks mis-selling crimes would be the first to disagree, however their contempt for the organisation might be tempered some if they were aware of the FSA’s latest moves against their largest competitors……
The Insurance price comparison websites and aggregators selling general insurance products on the Internet.
If the FSA’s latest proposals for the regulated Selling of Insurance on the Internet are enforced, this could be a good thing for all small insurance intermediaries out there, who collectively currently receive less than 5% of the total internet traffic searching for Insurance.

Making Business Insurance Decisions Easy for Business Owners

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions. If you are starting out in business or reviewing your initial company procedures and processes you will be faced by an endless choice of decisions to make.
Whilst the potential rewards of running a successful business drive them onwards, there are many challenges faced by small business owners, especially during the initial outset of the business when methods and procedures are being put in place. None more so when trying to navigate through the vagaries of business insurance risks and covers, which vary widely depending upon the type of business you engage in.
So where do you start to try to understand the risks that your business might face and the types of insurance that are available to protect your business from these risks?
Fortunately this has been recognised by specialist small business insurer, Hiscox who understands that business owners want to focus on what they do best – running their business.
So they have created a Business Insurance Decision Tree in the form of an infographic to help steer small business owners through the different types of insurance available to them.

A Brief History of Insurance: Part 4 Genoa and the first ever single independent insurance contracts

In this the fourth article on Insurance Blog within this series exploring the origins of insurance we move to Medieval Europe and the invention of separate insurance contracts in 14th Century Genoa…
As you may recall from earlier articles within this series, both the Romans and the Greeks had contributed to the development of insurance, shaping it into the complex financial product that it is now quite considerably. However it was from the ashes of the Roman empire that we see insurance start to fully develop.
As we move through history and reach the medieval period which is universally acknowledged as beginning when the western Roman Empire fell in 471AD, we see the Guilds rise to prominence and amongst their functions is something remarkably akin to that of the early Roman Burial Clubs. However, they also provide rudimentary medical insurance, fire insurance, marine insurance and even personal accident insurance to their members as well as a whole host of other social and economic benefits.
In fact despite the fall of the Empire the insurance practices that have become part of every day life across Europe for Merchants, Noblemen and Serfs alike remain in place. With the importance of insurance now firmly established as a key element within any society with commerce at its heart, the varieties of insurance and the complexity of the products continues to develop throughout the Middle Ages.

A brief history of Insurance: Part 3 Roman Life Insurance

Part Three: Roman Burial Clubs – the precursor to modern life insurance:
Welcome back to this fascinating series exploring the history of insurance…
To briefly recap, in the previous article we discovered that many phrases we are still aware of today within marine insurance such as General Average and indeed the very concept of Maritime Loans were created by the ancient Greek civilisation nearly two and a half millennia ago.
As with so much of the Greek culture these concepts of early insurance were integrated and absorbed into Roman culture which followed. It was under the influence of the arguably more economically aware Romans that these concepts began to become more progressively monetised and more in keeping with our understanding of modern insurance.
However one area of insurance that was to last throughout the ages clearly originated solely as a Roman concept – this was in fact Life Insurance.