---
title: "Insurable interest"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "concept"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "insurable interest"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-10-09T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: [[["entity-life-assurance-act-1774|Life Assurance Act 1774"]],"wagering policies",[["entity-amicable-society-for-a-perpetual-assurance-office|Amicable Society for a Perpetual Assurance Office"]],"actuarial history"]
seek_code_commit: "d40ee39"
---


The legal doctrine, put into English statute by the [[entity-life-assurance-act-1774|Life Assurance Act 1774]], that a life-insurance policy is enforceable only if the person benefiting from it has a genuine financial or personal stake in the life or event insured — a spouse, a creditor owed money, the holder's own life — rather than merely standing to collect on a stranger's death. Before the doctrine existed in statute, policies were routinely written on third parties with no such stake, purely as wagers ([[claim-life-assurance-act-1774-voided-policies-without-insurable-interest]]).

Load-bearing for this vault's early life-assurance material: it is the test that distinguishes the [[entity-amicable-society-for-a-perpetual-assurance-office|Amicable Society]]'s documented 1711 policy resales and loan-collateral assignments (both involving a holder's stake in their own policy) from the "mischievous kind of gaming" the 1774 Act was written to stop.

## References

- [[claim-life-assurance-act-1774-voided-policies-without-insurable-interest]]