Hazardous Voyages
Hazardous Voyages
Pennsylvania Company for Insurance on Lives and Granting Annuities first showed signs of life in December 1809 when articles of association were drawn up. It obtained a formal charter on March 10, 1812 but soon after that, America went to war with Britain. The Company delayed its initial bank offerings and did not write any life policies until 1813. The mnation's first joint-stock life insurance company had gotten off to a rocky start. Things would not get easier for some decades. Early life insurers had difficulty selling whole life policies because the cost of them was prohibitively high and their marketing and sales techniques too simplistic. The Pennsylvania Company, like most early life insurers, found it easier to sell trust services and life annuities—IOUs that made an annual payment for the duration of the policyholder's life. Where life insurance protected widows and minor children from the shock of the breadwinner's early death, annuities protected individuals from the curse of superannuation, of living “too long” after their economically productive years had ended.
Keywords: insurances, joint stock, annuities, economy, Pennsylvania Company
Chicago Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.