The concept of insurance is closely related to group life. It originated from the human need to find safeguards against the problem risks to himself and his property, but when, how and by what people it was started is shrouded in mystery and obscurity.
All historians agreed that the concept of insurance didn’t appear in primitive era yet. With assumption, in primitive society, people lived together in families or tribe in which their needs fully met and protected through cooperation and mutual. They, therefore, did not feel the need for insurance because they were fully protected against all sorts of risks by community.
The appearance of insurance is closely related to human civilization. The historians have marked Egypt and Mesopotamia as the oldest centers of civilization , with its fertile valleys of Nile, the Euphrates and the Tigris, where men would cease to wander and settle down almost unawares, forgetting all about their nomadic group life . Traders in that territory used the basic of insurance concept since around 4.000 years B.C. They implemented this concept because they felt uncertain accidents would against their security and safety in trading, cause of nature or non-nature factors .
Yet, however the written insurance concept regulation just comes to be known at era of Hammurabi, the fourth king of Babylon (1782-1682 B.C), with archaeological discoveries which shown a law book contained 300 sections. One of these sections contained one of insurance principles; it was “One for all” . The contract found in this book, was the embryo of a concept later to be known the whole world over as the contract of Bottomry or Respondentia. Bottomry is, or rather was, a commercial contract whereby money (or goods) was advanced for trade purposes either as:
a. True loans at a certain fixed rate of interest, under which the lender had no right to any share in the proceeding of the trading venture,
b. Mixed loans and partnerships which, in addition to the payment of a fixed rate of interest to the lender irrespective of the result of the trading, entitled him to receive a share of the profits, if such profits exceeded a certain sum .
The next stage in the evolution of Bottomry was its development by the Greeks during the ninth and tenth centuries B.C., it was not merely adopted, it was also adapted and perfected. Romans, whose adopted business concepts from Babylon, Phoenicia and Greek, developed these concepts to be insurance form.
But the economists are sharply divided on the concept of bottomry; did it can be called as insurance concept. Anyhow, the though kernel of Bottomry was the beginning of modern insurance development.
Any early signs of modern insurance in scientific form and on premium basis seemed to appear in the European countries in the middle of the thirteenth century . This insurance was known as marine insurance. This form was undoubtedly associated with the merchants of the cities of Lombardy and notably Florence in Italy, 1250. Dinsadle said that in the Middle Ages, trade was mainly centered in the Mediterranean, with well-known trade routes to the East; Constantinople and India, and to the North; Florence, Genoa, Palermo and Venice which became the centers for banking, commerce and insurance at that time .
From Italy, then marine insurance spread to Spain, France, England and other countries of Europe. The intensive trading by Barcelona since the end of fourteenth century caused marine insurance to flourish early in Spain. The earliest agreement known bears the date of the April 12th 1428. On November 21st 1435, by the insurance Ordinance of the Magistrates of Barcelona, Marine Insurance was for the first time, regulated by legal confirmation of existing practice . Marine insurance was practiced in London, England and Le Rochele and Merseilles, France on the beginning of fifteenth century. They practiced the same style with the insurance in Italy.
At the sixteenth century, marine insurance contract grew up steadier than before. At that time, the insurance contract has used the printed policies . Those policies were still written in Italian language, cause of Italian traders' domination. In this century, the practice of marine insurance resembled the practice of modern insurance that applied nowadays. Beside policies, they also used the insurance covering system which done collectively. And this collective covering system dominated entire practices of sea transportation insurance during ten years, up to the beginning of nineteenth century.
Specifically, the insurance companies appeared since eighteenth century. And on nineteenth century they developed rapidly in Europe, for instance in France with “Compagnie d’Assurances Generales” on 1753, and in England with “The Sun Fire” on 1710. Meanwhile in USA, were established “Mutual Relief Association” on 1752 and “Insurance Corporation” on 1772 as the first insurance company in Philadelphia .
The insurance arrived in Indonesia far before independent day, brought by Dutch who more than 350 years colonized this country. With proof, on 1845 was established a life insurance “N.V. Levens Verzekering Maatschappy van de Nederlande van” and fire insurance “Bataviasche See” . But, formally, the insurance and its institution be included in agenda of Indonesia law on 1848, herewith the legalization of Dutch Trading Laws in Indonesia.
Furthermore, in the second decade of the beginning of twentieth century, were established many indigene insurance companies, one of the oldest was “Onderlinge Levernverzekering Maatschappy Bumi Putra” established on February 2nd 1912 in Magelang, Central Java. Four years later, the group of Chinese ethnic in Semarang established also a loss insurance company, named by “NV. Indische Llyod, Algemene Verzekering Maatschappy” .
After the independent day on 1945, up toward 1950, the political situation in Indonesia did not give opportunity for insurance to develop. On 1950, Indonesian Government Banking established the insurance company, named by “Maskapai Asuransi Indonesia”, and on the years later came afterward many insurance companies in Indonesia . Up to now, on 2003, hundred insurance companies were established in Indonesia, for only life insurance companies found more that 53 companies. One of them was PT. Asuransi Takaful Keluarga, the only one of life insurance company based on Islamic law .
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