Masters Series 2024 - The Insurance Museum

The Insurance Museum: telling the global story on insurance, past, present and future.

The history of insurance is a very wide subject that stretches deep into prehistory. Early traders were practising risk management on the routes that stretched from the Mediterranean to the east through Persia, south through Africa and into northern Europe. The Code of Hammurabi, a Babylonian legal text from the 1750s BC, details an early form of insurance. The first insurance policies we have were written in Italy during the 12^th and 13th centuries. The first fire insurance companies came out of the Great Fire of London in the 17^th century, and at that time marine insurance boomed in the famous Lloyd’s Coffee House.

Why is this history important in today’s insurance profession and what benefits will an insurance museum bring to the insurance community? Howard Benge, Director of the Insurance Museum will discuss these questions, and lay out the plans for the Insurance Museum over the next 10 years.