Those who knew Mr. Knapp of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company weren't stunned when, early in 1879, he packed his baggage and sailed for London. He was not the form of man to be content material with armchair research; characteristically, he headed proper for the fountainhead of data on industrial life coverage, Henry Harben, of the Prudential.
Mr. Knapp was given a cordial reception. His research at primary confirmed his earlier determination to enter the enterprise. His succeeding step, one with out parallel inside the written account record of coverage historical past, was dead with typical boldness. He organized with Brice Collard, a British coverage man, to turn into his native deputy and to ship over a large variety of Englishmen adept in conducting industrial coverage, to launch Metropolitans new effort inside the United States.
Between 1879 and 1884 Mr. Collard commuted backwards and forwards from London to New York, delivery to our shores a number of hundred ready males, on with their households. Once located in key facilities, these males had a heroic activity to accomplish-to rent and practice native Agents inside the new method, and to arrange and set up district places of work from the very floor up-all at prime pace. They needed to educate a method of promoting insurance policies for small quantities, of receiving the premiums weekly inside the houses of the insured, and of accounting for this multitude of proceedings to the house workplace.
Many circumstances conspired to make formidable the constructing of an industrial coverage enterprise on this nation. The melancholy of 1873 and its aftermath of liquidations and bankruptcies had critically disturbed the business enterprise lifespan of the nation. This was in essence the most calamitous interval in American coverage historical past. Policyholders misplaced many tens of millions of {dollars} in firm failures, and public religion inside the establishment of life Insurance born to a low level.
Moreover, the American common people had little or no information of some great benefits of industrial coverage the massive majority had by no means even detected of it. Only the Prudential Insurance Company of America and the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company had been already inside the discipline, and their operations had been very restricted. There had been few fraternal organizations such because the English Friendly Societies to popularize amongst working common people the apply of saving medium of exchange imagination for the bills of demise.
Despite these difficulties, Metropolitan flourished from the very starting, most likely ascribable the adept scheme of the English Agents. The first industrial coverage was issued on November 17, 1879 and earlier than one other 12 months had one-handed greater than 200,000 such insurance policies had been issued. The coverage in power increased by leaps and bounds. At the tip of 1880, in a little over a 12 months, the corporate had on its books greater than $9,000,000 of commercial coverage.
This determine was just about two-fold throughout the succeeding 12 months. At the shut of 1882 the commercial enterprise in power exceeded $34,500,000. The firm one-handed the $100,000,000 mark early in 1886, a little greater than six years from the origin of the enterprise. As the amount of enterprise elevated, so did the Field Force. A number of weeks after industrial coverage was launched the corporate had three district places of work, with 130 Field Men. The following 12 months the power of the Field Force elevated to 750.
By 1883 greater than 1,600 males had been working from nearly 50 district places of work and the growth of enterprise and personnel continued apace. The coverage world considered this growth with amazement. The firm's succeeder had evidenced the large common demand for this kind of safety, beforehand nearly altogether ignored.
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