A white man’s slaves were for many his most prized possessions. These “objects” were valuable and valuable items need to be insured!
Slow sales led New York Life, the countrys’ third largest life insurance company, to look south and in in 1846 they sold 30 policies to whites wanting to insure their “stock”.
So, they kept going, they ran ads encouraging whites to insure their slaves.
On untimely death the insurance plans allowed a 3/4 return of the value, seeing as slaves died quite often, this deal was enticing and sales of the plans increased.
In 1847 these kinds of policies were around 1/3rd of the policies sold by the company, a big part and a big foundation of their business!
Slaves could even be used as collateral, JPMorgan, Chase and Wells Fargo all allowed this!
The Grio brought this story to our attention and they went onto write:
Aetna and US Life also sold these types of insurance policies to slave owners. This was an especially common practice for those whose slaves did hazardous work. This included those working in mines, lumber mills, on steamboats and in turpentine factories.
US Life has declined to comment on this story but Wachovia has apologized for these practices.
There are over 40 other firms that also sold slave policies, most of them based in the South.
These insurance policies on slaves didn’t turn out to be all that lucrative in the end, with New York Life paying out almost as much in death claims as it raked in. Still, in the span of just three years, it sold 508 of these policies. That is more than Aetna and US Life combined according to records examined.
Yep, so New York Life, Aetna and US Life ALL offered these policies! They do donate large amounts to black causes but is that enough, is an apology ok?
Please print more info about these insurance companies who insured slaves, so we can change who we buy insurance from.
What is the name of the other insurance companies?
As compensation, they should insure any black American policies without screening or questions about health or family history.
I’ve been in the insurance industry for 20 years plus and in 2015 NY Life knew this information would come out so they put together a 50 Billion Dollar commitment to the black community to ensure we had access to life insurance.. They even received the keys to the City of Atlanta… However I discovered, not shocked, that the commitment had no value… Same discriminating underwriting practices…only thing I saw was they were recruiting black agents with the same discriminatory hiring practices…hopefully we will get educated enough to actually force change to come… Ase
Thanks for sharing
Thank you