What is the name of the oldest mutual insurance company in the United States (founded 1752)?

The oldest mutual insurance company in the United States, founded in 1752, is The Philadelphia Contributionship.

Its full historic name is The Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire. Benjamin Franklin and fellow Philadelphia firefighters organized it to let policyholders share the financial risk of house fires. The company began as a mutual organization, meaning its members collectively owned or participated in the insurance arrangement rather than it being run solely for outside shareholders.

The Contributionship helped introduce practices that became central to modern underwriting. It inspected buildings before accepting them, evaluated construction and fire risk, and could reject properties or charge more when conditions were unsafe. It also established a reserve to help pay claims, an important step in making promises of compensation financially credible.

The company was organized in 1752 and incorporated in 1768. A historical nuance is that its insurance subsidiary later became a stock company within a mutual holding-company structure, but the Philadelphia Contributionship remains the recognized name associated with America’s oldest continuing mutual insurance tradition. It is often confused with the first stock insurer, the Insurance Company of North America, founded in 1792.