[[Actuarial Notes Wiki|Wiki]] / ==Actuarial History== ==Financial risk== has roots as far back as **3000 BCE**, when people living in ancient Sumer developed financial practices such as loans for commercial ventures and agricultural investment, recorded on clay tablets. By **1750 BCE**, [[The Code of Hammurabi]] in Babylon became one of the earliest legal frameworks to formalize risk-sharing agreements in maritime trade. The mathematical foundations of the modern actuarial profession began in the **1650s**, when Fermat and Pascal developed the first principles of [[probability theory]] through their correspondence on problems in gambling. This innovation laid the groundwork for later applications of mathematics to insurance and risk modeling. Shortly after, the devastating Great Fire of London in **1666** sparked the creation of the first [[fire insurance]] companies in England, such as the Fire Office established by Nicholas Barbon in 1680. Around the same time, cities like Hamburg established municipal fire insurance funds, most notably the [[Hamburger Feuerkasse]] in **1676**. In **1693**, Edmund Halley constructed the first [[Life Table]] from population data of the city of Breslau (now Wrocław), Poland. [[Life insurance]] in its modern form began to take shape in the early **1700s**. A key milestone was the founding of the [[Amicable Society for a Perpetual Assurance Office]] in 1706 in London, which marked the start of using mortality data to calculate premiums and benefits. ## I: History of Risk Management | Civilization / Era | Time Period | Innovations | | -------------------- | ---------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | | Sumer (Mesopotamia) | 3500 – 2000 BCE | [[Credit]] and Loans | | Babylon | 1894 – 539 BCE | [[Maritime Insurance]], [[Bottomry]] | | Ancient China | 2070 – 256 BCE | [[Surplus Reserves]] of Grain for food security | | Ancient Greece | 800 – 146 BCE | [[General Average]] (Insurance Principal) | | Ancient Rome | 753 BCE – 476 CE | Banking Systems, Legal Contracts, Annua ([[Annuity\|Annuities]]) | | Imperial China | 221 - 1912 CE | Paper Money, [[Mutual Aid]] (Baojia System) | | Middle Ages (Europe) | 500 - 1500 CE | Corrody, Guilds | | Islamic Golden Age | 700 - 1350 CE | [[Islamic Finance]] (Ethics of Interest) | | Rennaissance | 1300 - 1600 CE | [[Double-Entry Bookkeeping]], Joint-Stock Companies | ## II: History of the Actuarial Profession | Actuarial Era | Time Period | Innovations | | -------------------------------- | -------------- | ------------------------------------------------- | | Probability Theory is Formalized | 1654 - 1700 CE | [[Probability Theory]], [[Financial Mathematics]] | | Insurance and Pensions Flourish | 1700 - 1850 CE | [[Insurance]], [[Pension]] | | The Actuarial Profession is Born | 1850 - 1950 CE | [[Actuary]]. [[Risk Management]] | | Actuarial Modernization | 1950 - 2015 CE | [[Computer]], [[Digital Financial Services]] | | Digital Transformation (AI) | 2015 - present | [[Artificial Intelligence]] |