Old - Snippets

Give the life insurance theorist a chance —he may stumble on a good thing that will be as much of a surprise to him as the outside world. (p313)

--  A.B. Kellogg

1906 - Moodys Magazine, Vol 2 

  • If life insurance truths have not been widely disseminated and assimilated, life insurance untruths have.  (p29)

--  Josh Billings

1909 - Book - The Romance of Life Insurance Its Past, Present and Future, with Particular Reference to the Epochal Investigation Era of 1905-1908, by William Joseph Graham

  • I once heard of a juryman who, after listening with careful attention to the arguments in a long and complicated suit, said, "I  understand all I have heard except two words that have been often repeated, namely, plaintiff and defendant."
  • Give a man exact knowledge, about life insurance, and a flood of light will illuminate his mind; and much that may have been obscure and useless, will become clear and useful.
  • You know a great deal about life insurance, but are you clear as to its fundamental principles?
    • If in doubt, go into the infant class and learn your A. B. C's.

1911 - Book - The Life Agents Primer, by William Alexander

No difference how well-intentioned and honest an insurance man's advice may be it may prove very expensive and harmful if not based on accurate knowledge. (p28)

--  Isaac Miller Hamilton,  President of the· Federal Life Insurance Company

1914 - Academic - Conference on Life Insurance and Its Educational Relations, Published by the University of Illinois, Urbana - [xp-GooglePlay]

  • I would ask every thinking man in the community, therefore, if this subject of Life Insurance is not one which deserves the most patient and careful examination?

1850 - Book - Practical Remarks on the Present State of Life Insurance in the United States, by Harvey G. Tuckett

  • Don't touch your policyholders in such a way that you will be ashamed to keep in touch with them so long as they live.

--  A. B. Kellogg

1907 07 ??- Moody's Magazine - Volume 4 - [GooglePlay-link]

  • I have been present at such meetings more than once when the  whole course of a debate on some important question was changed by the halting remarks of some man who was reluctantly moved by a compelling sense of responsibility to combat theories and statements which had been glibly presented and generally accepted and which he knew to be erroneous, wholly or in part.

--  Alexander C.  Humphreys, President of Stevens Institute of Technology

1920, Proceedings of the Association of Life Insurance Presidents - Annual Meeting, Life Insurance Association of America: Volume 14

  • The commissioner and the legislature, of course, did not consider publicity a cure; therefore, mandatory legislation. 

1912 - Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Volume 42

  • Not one out of a thousand ever reads a line in their contract.
  • Woe to the companies if they did.

1911 - Book - Confessions of an Industrial Agent, by Jack Greenberg, (p151)

  • There is no excuse for life-insurance ignorance.
  • Law imposes its penalties alike on the knowing and unknowing offender, assuming it every man's duty to know the codes enacted to protect him and his neighbors in life, property, and pursuit of happiness. (p62)

1909 - Book - The Romance of Life Insurance, by William Joseph Graham

  • The method of computation of "net premium" is the great insurance secret.
    • We doubt if any legislator or any judge ever solved the problem or guessed the secret. (p66)

1917 - Book - A License to Steal: Life Insurance, the Swindle of Swindles : how Our Laws Rob Our Own People of Billions, by Philander Banister Armstrong - [305p-GooglePlay]

PROPOSED NEW INSURANCE LAW

  • Acting upon the suggestion by Superintendent Hotchkiss, Governor Hughes sent to the legislature last week a message, asking for the enactment of a law conferring created the necessity for some such law, it will be noted that upon the Superintendent power to deal summarily with insolvent insurance companies, or when their affairs are so managed as to render their continuance in business hazardous to the public.
  • The necessity of some such authority being commended in the head of the Insurance Department was demonstrated most emphatically in the recent entanglements most emphatically in the recent entanglements connected with the attempt to transfer the Washington Life to a Pittsburg company and remove its assets from the jurisdiction of the State of New York, which attempt was frustrated by the prompt action of the Attorney General.

1909 0318 - The Spectator, VOL. LXXXII

  • To quote from Josh Billings : " 'Tis better not to know so much, than to know so much that ain't so."
    • If life insurance truths have not been widely disseminated and assimilated, life-insurance untruths have.
    • Lack of knowledge as to what is so about life insurance has been offset by excess information coined and circulated by a sensational press as to what is not so. It is a case, therefore, of knowing
      both too little and too much at the same time.  (p29)

1909 - Book - The Romance of Life Insurance Its Past, Present and Future, with Particular Reference to the Epochal Investigation Era of 1905-1908, William Joseph Graham - [PDF-313p-GooglePlay]

  • It is of great importance at the present moment that sound principles on the subject of insurance should be widely and rapidly disseminated.
  • Whether they act by producing conviction, or opposition, a step is equally gained : nothing but indifference can prevent the public from becoming well acquainted with all that is essential for it to know on a subject, of which, though some of the details may be complicated, the first principles are singularly plain.

1838 - Book - An Essay on Probabilities, and Their Application to Life Contingencies and Insurance Offices, by Augustus De Morgan

  • .. when we come to value policies afterwards is a very different question indeed; and I, for one, cannot get over the dictum laid down by Professor De Morgan, that we have to deal with facts.
    • A man is aged x.
    • Well, you must charge yourself with the present value of the assurance upon that man, an credit for a portion of his premiums, that portion being what is conventionally known as the net premium.
    • Now what is net premium?
      • There has been a great deal of paltering with that.
    • Any person that will look carefully into the valuations will find that what some actuaries call a net premium is a net premium at variance with the data which they profess to be valuing.
      • That is not net premium, and it has done much detriment in many companies.
    • But that is a different question altogether.

1875 10 - Actuarial Paper - The Measure of Expenses in Life Assurance Companies, by James R. Macfadyen, Journal of the Institute of Actuaries and Assurance Magazine, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 153-174 - (23p - JSTOR)

  • TERM AND WHOLE-LIFE INSURANCE COST AS DEVELOPED BY THE ROYAL ARCANUM
  • A pamphlet on the above subject , by W. T. Wallace of Philadelphia, has recently made its appearance, and doubtless is being widely circulated among believers in the assessment or "pocket reserve " plan of insurance.
    • Its primary object seems to be to demonstrate by numerical examples the sufficiency of the Arcanum rates, which are said to be based upon the society's actual experience, and which take into account the rate of discontinuance as well as the death rate.
    • A comparison of the Arcanum mortality with the mortality of the American Experience Table is also given, after which Mr. Wallace naively asks which of the two tables is truthful and reliable.
    • An answer to this question, so far as it bears upon the Arcanum table, will be found in THE SPECTATOR of June 29 and August 17, 1905, wherein it is proved beyond cavil that the Arcanum mortality is so grossly understated by faulty graduation as to wipe out of the record between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-five alone no less than 572 deaths of the 5353 actually experienced, or more than one-tenth of the entire number.

1909 0617  - The Spectator

  • Among the applications refused are those of a New York banker, a railroad conductor, a barber, a foot specialist, a physician, several lawyers, a clergyman - who naively says that while some policies were obtained by him last year "my name was not used " -and another clergy man, whose authorization the company's general agent earnestly recommended, because he had “a very wealthy congregation in a small town and wished to increase his income."
  • Among the applications still under investigation are those of an undertaker - thought to be a rather gruesome life insurance solicitor... 

1909 0617 - The Spectator