ABSTRACT
The rates charged by insurers for lending have been examined to illuminate the workings of the money market during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This chapter shows what extent the investment behaviour of the three London offices, which are the subject of major company histories, was representative of the industry as a whole. During the eighteenth century the significance of insurance investment lay not in its aggregate amount, but in the fact that a small number of companies held much larger volumes of government stock than the average investor and were particularly active in trading them. Between 1811 and 1815 several insurance offices succeeded in obtaining private acts of parliament to enable them ‘to sue and make investments in the name of an individual on their part’. The importance of investment income may also be gauged by its ratio to premium receipts and by its contribution to total profits.
