overnments began to initiate national insurance programs

 Accident insurance
The Railway Passengers Assurance Company was founded in 1848 as the first company to provide accident insurance.

In the late 19th century, "accident insurance" began to become available. This operated much like modern disability insurance.[40][41] The first company to offer accident insurance was the Railway Passengers Assurance Company, formed in 1848 in England to insure against the rising number of fatalities on the nascent railway system. It was registered as the Universal Casualty Compensation Company to:

    ...grant assurances on the lives of persons traveling by railway and to grant, in cases, of an accident not having a fatal termination, compensation to the assured for injuries received under certain conditions.

The company was able to reach an agreement with the railway companies, whereby basic accident insurance would be sold as a package deal along with travel tickets to customers. The company charged higher premiums for second and third class travel due to the higher risk of injury in the roofless carriages.[42][43]
National insurance

By the late 19th century, governments began to initiate national insurance programs against sickness and old age. Germany built on a tradition of welfare programs in Prussia and Saxony that began as early as in the 1840s. In the 1880s Chancellor Otto von Bismarck introduced old age pensions, accident insurance and medical care that formed the basis for Germany's welfare state. His paternalistic programs won the support of German industry because its goals were to win the support of the working classes for the Empire and reduce the outflow of immigrants to America, where wages were higher but welfare did not exist.[44][page needed][45][page needed]
Leaflet promoting the National Insurance Act 1911

In Britain more extensive legislation was introduced by the Liberal government, led by H. H. Asquith and David Lloyd George. The 1911 National Insurance Act gave the British working classes the first contributory system of insurance against illness and unemployment.[46]

All workers who earned under £160 a year had to pay 4 pence a week to the scheme; the employer paid 3 pence, and general taxation paid 2 pence. As a result, workers could take sick leave and be paid 10 shillings a week for the first 13 weeks and 5 shillings a week for the next 13 weeks. Workers also gained access to free treatment for tuberculosis, and the sick were eligible for treatment by a panel doctor. The National Insurance Act also provided maternity benefits. Time-limited unemployment benefit was based on actuarial principles and it was planned that it would be funded by a fixed amount each from workers, employers, and taxpayers. It was restricted to particular industries, cyclical/seasonal industries like construction of ships, and neither made any provision for dependants. By 1913, 2.3 million were insured under the scheme for unemployment benefit and almost 15 million insured for sickness benefit.

This system was greatly expanded after the Second World War under the influence of the Beveridge Report, to form the first modern welfare state.[44][47][page needed]

In the United States, until the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935, the federal government did not mandate any form of insurance upon the nation as a whole. With the passage of the Act, the new program expanded the concept and acceptance of insurance as a means to achieve the individual financial security that might not otherwise be available. That expansion experienced its first boom market immediately after the Second World War with the original VA Home Loan programs that greatly expanded the idea that affordable housing for veterans was a benefit of having served. The mortgages that were underwritten by the federal government during this time included an insurance clause as a means of protecting the banks and lending institutions involved against avoidable losses. During the 1940s there was also the GI life insurance policy program that was designed to ease the burden of military losses on the civilian population and survivors.