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Insurance is one of the oldest industries in Hong Kong, and it has long played a significant role in the city's economic development. Suffice it to say that the insurance industry has evolved in step with the economy at large. In essence, the industry's development encapsulates that of the overall development of the territory. The industry's birth in Hong Kong can be traced to the establishment of the Canton Insurance Office Ltd. and the Union Insurance Society of Canton in the nineteenth century. Canton Insurance was jointly formed, and run, by turns, by Davidson-Dent and Magniac & Co. In 1835, Dent quit the joint operation and set up Union Insurance. The following year, Jardine, Matheson & Co. re-established Canton Insurance as a limited liability company. After the British took over Hong Kong in 1841, Canton Insurance and Union Insurance moved their bases of operations and registered for business in what was soon to be the Crown colony.

This chapter discusses the development of the insurance industry in the Far East and Pacific. In its nineteenth-century global territorial conquests, the European insurance industry encountered many obstacles in East and South East Asia. In addition to difficulties resulting from the enormous distances, the enormous cultural differences were difficult to surmount as was also the centuries-old self confidence of the region's economic operators, who in the early part of the nineteenth century were still convinced of their economic superiority. Furthermore, China, Japan, and Korea chose to isolate themselves from the rest of the world. This meant that the dissemination and development of insurance in East and South East Asia often followed a different trajectory to that in America and Africa. The most important cross-border insurance networks remained almost entirely restricted to the interior of the triangle of Japan, New Zealand, and India for quite some time. Three different development routes can be distinguished: the insurance activities of Europeans living in East Asia; the spread of agencies and subsidiaries of European and later other foreign insurers; and the founding of domestic insurance companies.

This chapter traces the history of the Indian insurance industry. India is considered to be one of the pioneers for the introduction of ‘market insurance’ in Asia. Already in the 1790s British insurers operated in India through ‘agency houses’ that, besides insurance, sold a curious portfolio of goods that reportedly included elephants. The East India Company also insured its cargoes through insurance offices in India. The first insurance company to be incorporated in India was by common consent the Oriental Life Insurance Company, founded by a Scotsman in Calcutta in 1818, with funds from three Indian businessmen.

This chapter traces the history of the Chinese insurance industry. The idea that insurance might be paid for was foreign to China. The concept was introduced in the early nineteenth century by Westerners trading in Guangzhou. Indigenization was a slow process which stretched from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth. The establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, with a decided turn against foreign enterprises operating in China from the 1950s, and radical communism from the late 1960s through the 1970s, led to its eradication. It was revived from the reversal of the state's policy towards private business from late 1978, and has grown rapidly since.

This chapter examines the history of the Korean insurance industry. The Korean insurance market had become the tenth largest in the world by 2008, with insurance premiums amounting to approximately USD 90.6 billion. Considering the fact that even until the middle of the nineteenth century there was no modern concept of insurance, such growth is remarkable. The chapter shows how the Korean insurance market has achieved such a rapid expansion and suggests ways in which the insurance market will develop in the future.

This introductory chapter begins by setting out the book's purpose — to show how European emigrants and insurance companies exported the concept of insurance and modern underwriting from the British Isles and established them as a European invention and cultural asset throughout the world. The discussions then turn to the expansion of the insurance industry at the end of the eighteenth century; the internationalization of the modern insurance business; obstacles to internationalization; the impact of the First World War and other factors that caused the insurance industry to lose its interconnectedness, which was not regained until decades after 1945; and the advent of the second globalization.

This chapter traces the history of the French insurance industry. The economic development of insurance in France came more slowly and at a later date than in England. The first marine insurance company was established in 1650 and came at a time when French commercial, maritime, and colonial expansion was predominant. With the beginnings of the Liberal Empire — the free trade agreement with England was signed in 1860 — companies had been encouraged by the general trend to develop their activities abroad. But it took until the late nineteenth century for French insurance companies to establish themselves more firmly in Britain, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Belgium, Egypt, Spain, Greece, the Netherlands, Italy, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, Portugal, Russia, Turkey, Sweden and Norway, and in Morocco.

This chapter traces the history of the Swiss insurance industry. It is remarkable that Switzerland today is one of the centres of the global insurance market given that the Swiss insurance industry developed later than those of many other European countries and is largely the product of the twentieth century. Until the end of the 1850s, the Swiss insurance market had scarcely been opened up and was almost exclusively in the hands of foreign, mainly French, British, and German, companies. Despite the protectionism that dominated the earlier parts of the last century, the Swiss insurers were some of the most successful international players. In the post-war period, the Swiss market came to be seen by insurers as unique, with Swiss insurance companies deriving between one-third and one-half of their premium income from abroad.

This chapter traces the history of the Russian insurance industry. The pioneers of insurance in Russia were the Dutch, who during the reign of Peter the Great (1682–1725) became the major agents of Russia's foreign trade. Marine and marine cargo insurance were also provided in Russia by foreign insurance companies operating through agents in the principal Russian ports. From the eighteenth to the first half of the nineteenth century, insurance in Russia, with its under-developed entrepreneurial sector, was a state initiative. The official state monopoly was replaced by a short-lived oligopoly of private fire insurance companies (it existed until 1847). The first marine and life insurance institutions had emerged by that time, but it was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that a real free market in insurance began to take hold in Russia.

This chapter traces the history of the Japanese insurance industry. Japan adopted an isolationist policy in 1639, which established national seclusion, disrupted trade, and reduced the opportunities for the marine insurance industry. Prior to isolation, a primitive form of marine insurance called nagegane had existed, brought by the Portuguese at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Historians have discovered that traders from Hakata and Sakai provided financing that included marine accident coverage for ship owners, merchants, and tradesmen. As shipping businesses developed along the coasts, methods for handling marine accidents were systematized and so-called marine contracts (kaijou ukeoi) began to be conducted by shipping agents in these areas. Marine contracts worked by attaching a risk fee onto shipping charges, while damages during transport on entrusted cargo saw the principal on the cargo paid to the consigning merchant. Upon entering a marine contract, a marine contract note (kaijou ukeoi tegata) fulfilling the roles of a receiving note and a marine insurance policy was issued. This domestic risk hedging method co-existed alongside modern marine insurance for international trade until the beginning of the Meiji period in 1868.

This chapter discusses the development of the insurance industry in Australia and New Zealand. In tracing the history of insurance and reinsurance markets in these countries, four major turning points are identified. The first turning point, towards the end of the 1890s, was distinguished by the introduction of a tariff system, which stabilized general insurance markets and influenced their growth over the next sixty years. The second turning point occurred during the 1950s, when an increase in the numbers of overseas and domestic competitors created the foundations of the modern industry. The third point, occurring during the 1970s, was characterized by a period of destabilization in the industry and the breakdown of tariff autonomy. The fourth and final phase occurred in the 1990s, when financial sector deregulation paved the way for structural change in financial and insurance industries, leading to a greater degree of integration with international markets and the emergence of global financial services institutions.

Although Mexico is the second national market in Latin America, with one of the highest rates of economic growth since 1995, insurance penetration is below the average for the region, standing in 2010 at 1.9 per cent of the country's GDP. The low penetration of insurance is explained by both the nature of Mexico as a nation and market and the specific development of the insurance industry in the country. This chapter traces the history of the Mexican insurance industry. It discusses the origins of the insurance industry in Mexico from the end of the nineteenth century until the changes resulting from the revolution of 1910; the departure of various companies from the country in the face of the protectionist measures imposed by the government; the development of a local industrial sector, protected from external competition; and finally, the liberalization process which began in 1990 and which culminated in the strong presence of global companies in Mexico.

This chapter traces the history of the US insurance industry. The US has been and still is for many foreign insurers and reinsurers their biggest single market, representing large flows of funds and knowhow, but which varied considerably in direction, degree, and by insurance sector over time. Long before the telephone and internet connected countries, cross-border insurance allowed US and non-US firms to diversify internationally with little or no presence in foreign markets, by ceding (or assuming) American risk or in the case of US firms, by taking on risk from other countries. The story of this sector in the US is part of the larger story of how particular cultures adapted to a broad range of social, political, and technological changes on the road to modern globalization. It is a complicated and, in many ways, particularly American transformation process defined by elements of American cultural and economic history, and punctuated by key events like the San Francisco earthquake and Hurricane Katrina.

This chapter traces the history of the South African insurance industry. The first South African insurance company to be founded in Cape Colony was the Zuid-Afrikaansche Brand en Levensversekering Maatschappij in December 1835. A decade later this was followed by the formation of the South African Mutual Life Assurance Society in 1945, which modelled itself on the Scottish Equitable Mutual Life Assurance Society, which was later called Old Mutual. The general growth in the sector continued until by 1861, more than twenty insurance companies operated in the Cape. After the mineral discoveries in the late 1860s, many UK companies extended their business to Johannesburg, while Australian, American, and New Zealand insurance concerns also sought benefit from the rapidly growing urban population and the high risks associated with the mining industry. By the turn of the century, more than fifty foreign insurance companies were doing business in the Cape alone.

This chapter traces the history of the German insurance industry. It was only in the mid-nineteenth century that a German insurance industry can properly be spoken of, one which demonstrated sound technical skills, appropriate support institutions, and real growth potential. Until this time, there were only a few pioneering insurance enterprises active, which tested the viability of the market, and sought reliable ways to organize and do business. They met with mixed success, but most were open to foreign ideas and some orientated their business for cross-border activity. Indeed, by the time it took-off in the mid-nineteenth century, the industry already boasted international linkages established through numerous channels. The century's three major lines of insurance business — fire, marine, and life — owed their successful rise largely to international cooperation agreements and input from abroad. Academics and practitioners from various countries worked closely together in preparing start-ups, while newly founded companies looked to foreign experts for advice or copied the underwriting practices of successful industry pioneers from abroad.

This chapter traces the history of the insurance industry in the United Arab Emirates. The oil-exporting countries of the Gulf all have a very brief history of exposure to the concept of modern insurance. Among them the United Arab Emirates (UAE) provides the most arresting example of a quantum leap from a poverty-stricken society to a business environment, where assets worth billions of dollars need to be insured. There are currently fifty-eight insurance companies and 170 brokers operating in the two main population centres, the capital of the UAE Abu Dhabi, the business hub Dubai and in the five smaller emirates. The acceleration over the last four decades of public and private economic activities in the UAE necessitated and facilitated the establishment of an insurance industry, in which national companies now outnumber the foreign ones. The institution by federal and regional governments of an increasing number of mandatory insurances furthered the recent growth of this market.

This chapter discusses the development of the insurance industry in the Middle East and Northern Africa. European insurers stayed away from the region until the middle of the nineteenth century, although some among them were already underwriting risks there from the late eighteenth century. The first country in the Middle East where European insurance firms had a presence in the nineteenth century was Algeria, also a part of the Ottoman Empire. Two years after the end of a protracted war of conquest from 1830 to 1843, in which the French army brought the country under its control and European settlers poured into the country, the first French insurance company opened an agency in Algiers. After the end of the First World War, when certain countries pressed on with modernization programmes along European lines on which they had embarked during the nineteenth century, insurance was one aspect of European culture that they adopted, laying the foundations for insurance markets of their own. Such modernization met with the most spectacular success in Turkey, where a modern nation-state with unrestricted sovereignty arose from the ruins of the collapsed Ottoman Empire.

The shift of Hong Kong's economy from manufacturing to services started in the mid-1980s and continued apace into the 1990s. The impact on the insurance industry could not have been more direct. Naturally, the booming life market in Hong Kong caught the attention of many global players. Some of them quickly poured in capital and human resources to get a piece of the action. This chapter reviews four of these new global entrants: Union des Assurance de Paris-Vie, National Mutual Life Association of Australia, Transamerica Occidental Life Insurance, Lippo Reliance Insurance Co. Facing pressures from inflation, government supervision, and competition both internally and externally, many life insurance companies sought to stand out by introducing innovative products and expanding the scope of services. This chapter examines some of the market innovations that emerged in the 1990s: savings and dread disease products, all-in-one coverage, and combining coverage and investment.