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The New India Assurance was to be the first wholly Indian
owned insurer. By the 1950s it had built a global network of
agencies.
The spread of personal insurance was mainly a consequence of
the massive migration from Europe that took place in the
th
th
19 and early 20 centuries.
Across the African continent, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, it
was South Africa that was to take the lead. Dutch and British
immigrants founded combined fire and life insurance companies
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already in the 1830s. In the early 20 century the South African
state took a unique approach by choosing to do without social
insurance and leaving old age provision to life insurers.
The South African government created jobs with tied-in
pensions and medical provision when confronted with large
workforces flocking to the cities after World War I. Over the
next decades the country not only attained the worldwide
highest proportion of life insurance, or long-term insurance, as
it was to be called, but South Africa became a leading expert in
life market innovations.
However, both the size and number of risks to be insured
began outstripping the capacities of the insurance industry
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towards the second half of the 19 century. Traditionally,
insurers resorted to sharing risks among each other or reinsuring
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