Astin is formally twenty years old, or should I say young, and the occasion of the 13th Colloquium being held in the country where it was constituted seems a very suitable opportunity for making a record of the ten years prior to its formal constitution. This is a personal account and sets out facts and impressions which are now becoming coloured by the vagaries of memory; others will have their own impressions of some of the events and I hope will be stimulated to correct any biasses or to supplement the historical record.

Inevitably this record will not be complete and I apologise in advance for any significant omissions. Over the years I have accumulated a large mass of correspondence and had hoped to codify this in anticipation of this article but unfortunately a series of complications arising from my move to a part of rural England as a further stage in my retirement programme have delayed sorting through the mass of paper.

My interest in non-life insurance was first stimulated when I was involved in the early 1930's in an analysis of the results of Fire and Auto Property business written in the US. This brought me face to face with the differences between the UK and US approach to profit measurement, in particular the real meaning of unearned premiums. The conventional UK method of basing the provision for unexpired risks on 40% of the premiums written during the year led to significant distortion in the emergence of profits (or losses) with an increasing volume of business, a large proportion of which was for periods of three years. Equally the US method of basing a statutory result without any allowance for the equity in the unearned premiums led to further distortions of the true profit, quite apart from the practice, then permitted, of substantial portfolio reinsurance transactions at the close of accounting periods.