At one time, insurance companies were users of bleeding edge computer technology. Shortly after the U.S. Army began to use the first mainframes to compute shell trajectories for heavy artillery (before anybody knew what a mainframe was), insurers began using those room-sized behemoths to calculate mortality rates and actuarial tables. Later they were the first to use second-generation mainframes to store customer data. Only the federal government had bigger databases than underwriters and those pioneering insurance companies who needed every bit of binary storage they could lay their hands on.

Banking and insurance provided willing customers for mainframe computer manufacturers in the 1950s. Many of those early mainframes, or at least their direct descendants, are still in existence, and our industry is no longer considered a front-runner when it comes to technology.

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