The Amicable Society, founded in London in 1706, became the world's first mutual life insurance company, pooling premiums to pay death benefits regardless of age — an early model of collective risk sharing for individuals.

The growth of mutual societies for collective protection against death and loss reshaped how ordinary English people thought about mortality and community; this cultural shift informed the sentimental and moral literature of the early eighteenth century. Poets began to explore themes of mortality and social responsibility in their works.