Concept    From 1762 

scientific life assurance

Categories: Commerce, Science

Equitable Life, the world's oldest mutual insurer, started business in 1762 in the parsonage of St Nicholas Acons in Nicholas Lane. It pioneered scientific life assurance by basing premiums on age and mortality rates.

Elsewhere Dr Richard Price (1723 - 1791) is credited with having founded actuarial science.  He was also the radical minister at the Dissenters' church on Newington Green (inside which there is a plaque) where he met and influenced Mary Wollstonecraft, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Joseph Priestley, etc.  Roberta Wedge, author of the blog A Vindication of the Rights of Mary, offered to see if there was a connection between Price and the parsonage “where scientific life assurance began in 1762”.   Roberta found in The Actuarial Profession reference to a report Price produced in 1774, “one of the key documents in the history of actuarial science”.  This report was addressed to the Society’s directors.  She also discovered a readable history, as a slideshow with lecturer's notes, which says Price was a consultant to the Society from 1770 onwards. The Society's first actuary was appointed on the recommendation of Price; William Morgan, who put his stamp on the organisation while serving from 1775 to 1830, was Price's nephew. 

Comments are provided by Facebook, please ensure you are signed in here to see them

This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
scientific life assurance

Commemorated ati

St Nicholas Acons parsonage

Site of the Parsonage of St Nicholas Acons where scientific life assurance be...

Read More

Other Subjects

Squadron HG

Squadron HG

121 Kentish Town Road.

Group, Armed Forces, Commerce

1 memorial
Caesar Czarnikow

Caesar Czarnikow

Sugar broker. Born Carl Julius Caesar Czarnikow in Sondershausen, Germany. He came to Britain in 1854, and established his sugar brokerage firm, C. Czarnikow, in 1862, which by the time of his deat...

Person, Commerce, Germany

1 memorial
Ritz Hotel

Ritz Hotel

Opened by Swiss hotelier Cesar Ritz. The first hotel in the country where every room had an ensuite bathroom.

Place, Commerce

1 memorial
W. F. D. Smith, Lord Hambleden

W. F. D. Smith, Lord Hambleden

On his father's death in 1891 he became head of the family firm of W.H. Smith and Son and also took over as MP for the Strand Division, until 1910. Chairman of King's College Hospital. Became 2nd V...

Person, Commerce, Politics & Administration

2 memorials
First Pret a Manger shop

First Pret a Manger shop

The brand Pret a Manger actually started in Hampstead but that folded after 18 months and the brand was sold to Julian Metcalfe and Sinclair Beecham who restarted it in Victoria near, but not actua...

Concept, Commerce, Food & Drink

1 memorial

Previously viewed

Downhills Primary School

Downhills Primary School

Multi-national school with 94% of its pupils drawn from ethnic minorities and 70% taught English as an additional language. In 2012, the then Education Secretary Michael Gove cited that the school ...

Place, Education

1 memorial