By the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Venice's Rialto had become the leading European centre for marine insurance contracts, with brokers and underwriters operating alongside bankers and merchants in formalised arrangements.

Venice's establishment of the Rialto as a center of marine insurance trading is immortalized in Shakespeare's 'The Merchant of Venice', where Antonio's shipping losses drive the entire plot; the play reflects a world in which marine risk and financial ruin were central anxieties of commercial society. This context also influenced later poets like John Milton, who addressed themes of commerce and morality.