STATE OF NEW YORK INSURANCE DEPARTMENT ALBANY January 12th of the present year (1910) completed a halfcentury of the existence of the Insurance Department of the State of New York. In the preparation of the fifty-first annual report to the Legislature it was thought desirable that such reminiscences as might occur to the Hon. William Barnes, who was the organizer and for the first ten years the Superintendent of the Department, would very properly find place in such report, and accordingly an invitation to contribute such history was addressed to him at his residence at Nantucket Island, Mass. His reply was prompt and full, and the writer is indebted to it for some of the facts and figures contained in the text of Part I of the present report. Owing to the mass of matter which was treated of in that paper, lack of space precluded the publication at that time of Mr. Barnes' letter which it gives me great pleasure to produce here. William A. Hotchkiss [ix] Superintendent. EARLY INSURANCE SUPERVISION IN NEW YORK ESTABLISHMENT OF INSURANCE DEPARTMENT AND THE FIRST NANTUCKET ISLAND, MASS. The Honorable WILLIAM H. HOTCHKISS, Superintendent of Insurance. MY DEAR SIR. Your letter of the 13th of Dec. 1909 was duly received, in which you kindly ask me to send you some reminiscences and facts connected with the origin and early history of the Insurance Department of the State of New York in view of the early approach of the semi-centennial of its organization, January 12, 1910. You must excuse personalities and incidentally perhaps some self-laudation - (magna pars fui) — in stating these facts with which I am more familiar than any other living individual. 1830-1859 The Revised Statutes of 1830 provided that all "monied corporations" (which term was defined to include Insurance Companies) should make annual reports in a prescribed form to the comptroller, and Comptroller Millard Fillmore in 1848 prepared a new blank form for these annual statements. These blanks required life insurance companies, under the heading of liabilities, to report the face of all their outstanding policies, instead of the net value of such policies. The annual reports of New York State insurance companies, and also the text of the reports of the different comptrollers on insurance until 1859, are contained in the first two volumes of the Barnes condensed reports. 1855 Prior to the year 1855 I had been appointed by the Honorable D. B. St. John, Superintendent of the Banking Department, as a special examiner to examine the Lewis County Bank and the Reciprocity Bank of Buffalo. My reports on these two examina tions introduced me to the attention of the Honorable James M. Cook, Comptroller of the State of New York, when he deemed it expedient to examine into the solvency of a fire insurance company at Waterford and several fire companies in the city of New York. I was appointed by him as a special commissioner to make these examinations, such companies having been under the supervision of the comptroller since the year 1830 as corporations," under the revised statutes of that year. monied In the summer of 1855, I examined the following companies: 1. The Knickerbocker Insurance Company of Waterford, N. Y. 2. The Webster Fire Insurance Company of New York City. 3. The National Exchange Insurance Company of New York City. 4. Mechanics' Fire Insurance Company of New York City. 5. Henry Clay Fire Insurance Company of New York City. 6. Enterprise Insurance Company of New York City. During the next year the Hon. Lorenzo Burrows, comptroller, appointed a board of three special commissioners to examine all the fire insurance companies in the city of New York. 1856 An act was introduced in the Legislature of 1856, on the recommendation of Comptroller James M. Cook, establishing an Insurance Department. This proposed act was opposed by insurance companies and a remonstrance, of which the following is a copy, was presented to the Legislature: REMONSTRANCE AGAINST THE PROPOSED LAW NOW BEFORE THE SENATE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK ENTITLED "AN ACT TO ORGANIZE AN INSURANCE DEPARTMENT, AND TO REGULATE THE BUSINESS OF INSURANCE." TO THE HONORABLE THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK: The undersigned, representing Insurance Companies organized under the laws of the State of New York, hereby on behalf of said Companies respectfully, but earnestly, remonstrate against the passage of the "Act to organize an Insurance Department, and to regulate the business of Insurance," now before the Senate. Among the objections to the proposed law are the following: It is unequal and unjust in its exactions, and altogether unequal in the degree of security it would afford, if even its contemplated security were not, as it is, entirely fallacious. |