Insurance has been a key tool to many Americans’ financial success, and actuaries have been essential in building this tool.
But the insurance industry, as with many American systems, has a history intertwined with and impacted by the complicated history of Black Americans. While many of these events are understood in a general sense, the goal of this timeline is to highlight the details - to shed light on the Black American experience and touch on its intersection with insurance and financial services. For some, this will be familiar, but for many, this will be new information.
The goal is to equip actuaries and other insurance professionals with a new lens to understand the industry we are in, the products we build, the business practices we support, and the questions we ask. This is a timeline of adversity and progress in the Black American experience; a living and breathing account we can learn from and add to.