Our speaker for the night was none other than the very entertaining Brett McDonald from Insurance Advisernet
Brett spoke about the history of insurance, where it came from, the background behind some of the clauses that affect the basis of every insurance contract.
We learned what the term underwriting means and how it became known as that, how Lloyds of London was formed and how the very first Fire brigades were started in London and how they used Fire marks on buildings as each insurer managed their own brigade. If the brigade turned up to a fire and didn’t see their insurers mark, they didn’t respond to putting out the fire. As such it wasn’t a very fair system but was how we evolved to the current system of government control over brigades.
He also gave us some rather dramatic examples of the catastrophe losses that have occurred over the last two years in Australia alone with total payouts just from storms and bushfire at a little over $7.75billion let alone the normal everyday claims that occur in the insurance industry.
He is a very interesting fellow full of knowledge and makes insurance a wonder, not boring at all 😊