Sentry Insurance Workers' Compensation
2011 marks the 100th anniversary of the U.S. workers' compensation system. Here's a look back to when the Wisconsin Hardware Limited Mutual Liability Insurance Company was formed in 1914 to provide workers' compensation insurance.
Sentry Insurance a Mutual Company, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, was founded in 1904 by the Wisconsin Retail Hardware Association to provide fire insurance for its members. The company, The Hardware Dealers' Mutual Fire Insurance Company of Wisconsin, was only licensed to sell property insurance.
Because state laws in the early 1900s prohibited insurance companies from insuring both property and casualty risks, the directors of the Wisconsin Retail Hardware Association appointed a committee in 1913 to "investigate the advisability of establishing a liability insurance company to take care of the liability of merchants in the hardware and kindred lines of business under the Workmen's Compensation Act."
"Inasmuch as the law is here to stay," the committee's report read, "and the number that come under the Act, increasing, it looked to your committee that a material savings could be affected for members of this Association through a liability company of their own."
Members of the Wisconsin Retail Hardware Association adopted the committee's recommendation and established a second mutual company in 1914. It was called the Wisconsin Hardware Limited Mutual Liability Insurance Company.
The company sold general liability, plate glass and workers' compensation insurance.
The first injury claim paid by the Wisconsin Hardware Limited Mutual Liability Insurance Company was for $9, and was under a policy issued to the Stevens Point Brewery.
The first death claim occurred in its first year, and nearly shut down the company. That claim cost $3,000 and the surplus of the company at that time was only $2,811. The Wisconsin Retail Hardware Association helped pay the death claim, and decided that the insurance company needed to better spread its risks. So, they expanded the sale of liability insurance to more types of businesses in more states.
