CHAPTER XX


  NON-MUTUAL CONTRACTS FOR PAYMENTS ON DEATH OF A PERSON OR PERSONS AS KNOWN TO THE ROMANS


   In the preceding section it has been shown that the Romans were fully aware of the advantages to be derived from mutual accumulations of funds for the purposes of providing funeral benefits; that, probably, mutual life assurance (or, better, mutual industrial insurance) had been developed from the payments for funeral expenses and was largely practised under the cloak of those payments. Whence it Roman may be urged that if the Romans had learnt mutual life ^e value of life assurance the burial or religious assurance societies would have supplied their requirements value. aⁿcl wou^ have rendered it unnecessary for them to have developed further the business of insurance by evolving a system of non-mutual life assurance. This objection is, however, invalidated by the following considerations :—


    (a) In the case of a person insuring his own life the disadvan-tages of these club insurances were .*_____
         (1) the limitation to a very small sum of the amount / \ wbich could be obtained in a mutual society;
         (2) the nominal object for which the money was paid by
              the society ;                        J
         ft                     of such payments ;
         (1) e . . c y of insisting on the payment of the fun&f-tn.                 Partⁱcular individual; and
  whole lifet msuraⁿce was limited practically to

    (&) In the case of a person wishing to buy or sell a reversion or to use the msurance contract for the purposes of lending or useless¹¹¹^ moⁿey’            class of insurance was almost


(5)

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