The history of the “slip” for insurance purposes has a fascinating story all of its own. It started life in the late 17th century, as no more than a promise written on a humble slip of paper. Over the next three centuries, that humble slip would evolve from a handwritten coffeehouse agreement into a sophisticated digital contract that powers the global sector today. And the term “underwriter” or “underwriting” has its origins in this process of writing one’s name under the promise. 

So let’s go back in time, to discover how the slip evolved from its origins in the coffee houses of London, to its part in the foundation of modern insurance.

Let’s imagine London in the 1680s. The air inside Edward Lloyd’s coffeehouse hums with the noise of merchants, sailors, and shipowners talking about trade. At one corner table, a man slides a small slip of paper toward a group of investors. On it are written the ship’s name, its route to the West Indies, and the value of the cargo. One by one, the men take up a pen and sign their names beneath the details – each committing to cover a portion of the risk if the voyage ends badly. Each investor who signed “under” those details became an underwriter, responsible for a share of the loss if disaster struck. Slips were practical, flexible, and quick – perfect for a fast-moving trading city. They captured the key facts and the spirit of collaboration that defined early marine insurance.

When merchants began insuring ships and cargoes in seventeenth-century London in this way, the work was built on trust. There were no corporations or underwriters’ offices — just merchants and traders who knew one another, sharing risk in exchange for a premium. But as trade expanded across the world and as the industrial revolution introduced new challenges, the informal system began to strain. A growing market needed rules, record-keeping, and reliability. The slip would have to evolve.

So as we step into the nineteenth century, the insurance sector looks a very different place. Lloyd’s had outgrown the coffeehouse and was, by then, a more formal affair, with brokers representing clients and underwriters competing for business. The whole sector had become more professionalised.

At this time the slip evolved into the broker’s working document. It summarised the risk, listed the parties involved, and recorded how the risk was divided among underwriters. Once everyone had indicated their share, a full policy could be drawn up to become more formally binding. To keep the market orderly, Lloyd’s standardised the format. Every slip had to include specific information – vessel, cargo, voyage, premium, and special conditions. This helped prevent confusion and made the document a reliable record of agreement.

During the twentieth century, insurance faced even more challenging risks. But the same model of shared risk which formally originated in the coffee houses of London (and informally in Babylonian times), now also applied to airplanes, factories, natural disasters, even space travel.

The Lloyd’s slip became the global template. Typed instead of handwritten, it often stretched to several pages, with copies taken for each party. Regulators in different countries required slips to contain precise language about premiums and liabilities. By mid-century, the slip was no longer a mere precursor to the policy – it was a binding record of the contract. Courts could use it to confirm who had agreed to what, and under what terms. In essence, the slip had become the universal language of risk.

The next great shift came not from trade but from technology. By the early 2000s, the paper-based process that had served for centuries was too slow for a globalised market.

Lloyd’s responded with the Market Reform Contract (MRC) – a standardised electronic document designed to replace the paper slip. The new format preserved the slip’s purpose but organised the information in a way that could be shared, searched, and stored digitally.

Soon after, in 2013, the market came together to launch Placing Platform Limited (PPL) to bring insurance placement online and into the digital age. In its early development, PPL partnered with technology providers to deliver an online digital placing system for the London Market, combining centuries of underwriting tradition with the expertise of a modern digital marketplace, transforming how brokers and underwriters connect today. The process that once took couriers, signatures and days, could now happen in seconds. Yet it still serves the same role as its coffeehouse ancestor: recording promises and managing trust. Only the medium has changed – from pen and pager to screens and secure platforms. 

Even as technology transforms how we communicate, the essential purpose hasn’t changed. Whether it’s a ship leaving port in 1700 or a satellite launch in 2025, someone must still define the risk, share it, and document the promise to pay if things go wrong. Every digital contract in today’s market carries the DNA of those first handwritten slips. They remind us that behind every transaction lies something profoundly human – the need to make risk visible, and to make promises we can trust.