Franklin's company refused to insure certain buildings, such as wooden houses, where the risk of fire was too great. In 1752, he founded the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire.
In Colonial America, Benjamin Franklin helped to popularize and make standard the practice of insurance, particularly Property insurance to spread the risk of loss from fire, in the form of perpetual insurance. The first property insurance company still extant was founded in 1710 as the 'Sun Fire Office' now, through many mergers and acquisitions, the RSA Insurance Group. One such notable company was the Hand in Hand Fire & Life Insurance Society, founded in 1696 at Tom's Coffee House in St Martin's Lane in London. They also began to issue ' Fire insurance marks' to their customers these would be displayed prominently above the main door to the property in order to aid positive identification. Initially, each company employed its own fire department to prevent and minimize the damage from conflagrations on properties insured by them. In the wake of this first successful venture, many similar companies were founded in the following decades. Initially, 5,000 homes were insured by Barbon's Insurance Office. A number of attempted fire insurance schemes came to nothing, but in 1681, economist Nicholas Barbon and eleven associates established the first fire insurance company, the "Insurance Office for Houses", at the back of the Royal Exchange to insure brick and frame homes. The devastating effects of the fire converted the development of insurance "from a matter of convenience into one of urgency, a change of opinion reflected in Sir Christopher Wren's inclusion of a site for 'the Insurance Office' in his new plan for London in 1667". Property insurance can be traced to the Great Fire of London, which in 1666 devoured more than 13,000 houses.
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