Burglary Insurance Statistics

Burglary Insurance in various forms has been written in the United States for approximately twenty years. During the year 1894 there was only one burglary insurance company operating in this country, and that company insured banks only. The volume of premiums for that year amounted to $48,360 and the losses to $5,930. Prior to 1894 a few local burglary insurance companies had started writing this line of insurance in one form or another, but they were either short-lived or glad to drop the new venture and take up other lines which were more profitable. A year or two later other companies entered the field; one of them devoting most of its efforts to insuring residences and the other to insuring stores and mercantile establishments. Several other companies entered the field during the next few years and began writing all lines of the burglary insurance business, insuring residences, stores and mercantile establishments, office safes, bank safes and vaults, and messengers and paymasters against loss by robbery or hold-up. During the year 1914 the total net burglary insurance premiums written by all companies in the United States amounted to $4,225,594 and the losses paid aggregated $1,625,697.