the.com/insurance
a bet you win by losing, run by people who calculated you won't.
means A contract in which you pay regular sums to a company that agrees to compensate you for specified losses — accidents, illness, death, disaster — if they occur.
from From the Old French enseurer, 'to make sure,' a variant of assurer (to assure), built on Latin securus — 'free from care,' from se- (without) plus cura (care). So at its root, insurance literally promised to make you carefree. The two words 'assurance' and 'insurance' lived as near-twins for centuries; British practice eventually nudged 'assurance' toward life policies and 'insurance' toward everything else, though the line was never tidy.
- ancient roots
- Babylonian merchants insured cargo around 1750 BC
- lloyd's origin
- started in a 17th-century London coffeehouse
- actuarial edge
- premiums are math designed to outlast your luck
- act of god
- a real legal term in policy fine print
- alien abduction
- you can actually buy coverage for it
lloyd's of london — world's oldest insurance market, founded 1688, still operating in london
berkshire hathaway — warren buffett's company, $302 billion in insurance float as of 2023
aig 2008 bailout — u.s. government rescued insurer with $182 billion after financial crisis
lloyd's names crisis — 1980s-1990s collapse where 2,000+ individual investors lost £11 billion