The United States was not built on ambition alone. It was built on a willingness to share risk.
“We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
This is the closing line of the Declaration of Independence — a clear and deliberate commitment to distribute risk, not merely a symbolic sign-off.
This principle is easy to overlook in how we tell the story of American progress — a story more often centered on independence, innovation, and individual ambition. But these qualities depend on something more foundational: the ability to distribute risk so that failure does not stop progress.
As an American, and as the CEO of a global insurance and reinsurance company, I see that principle at work every day. Our role is straightforward. We provide financial resilience that allows people and businesses to act with confidence, and to recover and rebuild when things don’t go according to plan.
As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, there will be no shortage of reflection on what the country has built. I tend to focus more on what made that progress possible.
Risk-Sharing Built America Before Anyone Called It That
Across every chapter of American development, one constant stands out: meaningful progress has required both a willingness to take risk and systems capable of absorbing it.
In colonial cities like Philadelphia, property owners pooled resources to cover fire losses and began inspecting buildings to reduce exposure. In doing so, they didn’t just protect assets — they helped establish the foundations of modern building standards and safer cities.
Merchants underwriting transatlantic voyages spread the risk of early global trade. The model, refined in places like Edward Lloyd’s coffeehouse in London, allowed commerce to expand beyond what any single balance sheet could sustain. That principle still underpins
the modern economy. Today, global trade has reached $33 trillion and more than 80% of those goods move by sea. Virtually none of it moves uninsured.
Because risk could be shared, pillars of the American dream became accessible to far more people. Home ownership expanded through the 30-year mortgage. The 49,000 miles of interstate highway we rely on today is are rooted in a post-World War II commitment to shared investment, shared exposure, and the confidence to build at national scale.
The past two and a half centuries have proven one thing consistently: large-scale investment does not happen in a vacuum. Capital moves when risk can be managed. Projects move forward when uncertainty can be absorbed.
The Same Principle Applies to What America Wants to Build Next
These historical examples illustrate ingenuity enabled by structural support — and that scaffolding is just as important now.
America’s ambitions to strengthen domestic manufacturing, expand energy infrastructure, lead in artificial intelligence, and build the data capacity required for a modern economy all depend on the ability to understand, price, and transfer risk.
At the same time, the nature of risk is evolving. Natural catastrophes are becoming more severe and more frequent. Cyber threats are introducing new forms of interconnected exposure. And when disruptions occur today, they do not stay contained — they move across industries and borders with speed.
Recent years have made this tangible. Global natural catastrophes now generate hundreds of billions of dollars in economic losses annually, with a significant portion uninsured. That protection gap is more than an industry issue — it has significant implications for how quickly communities recover and how confidently economies grow.
The Industry’s Responsibility
Maintaining a system that can support continued progress requires both capacity and discipline. Risk must be priced in a way that reflects reality. Underwriting has to be consistent across cycles. When risk and returns are misaligned, our industry has a responsibility to step back, be candid, and innovate — to build the structures that will define the next 250 years.
We cannot stand still. Risks are changing, and our industry must evolve with them. That means building new products, deepening analytical capabilities, investing in talent, and making better use of technology — including artificial intelligence — to understand risk in more dynamic ways. An industry that fails to do this is not a useful partner to anyone.
History suggests we will take those steps. It always has.
No country has done this better. The American system for absorbing risk — its capital markets, its legal protections, its insurance and reinsurance infrastructure — is the deepest and most sophisticated in the world. That is not an accident of geography or good fortune. It is the product of centuries of deliberate construction. The choice, made again and again, to build mechanisms that let ambition outrun fear.
The American experience demonstrates what many other economies are still building toward. Countries able to mobilize capital, distribute risk effectively, and recover efficiently from disruption are better positioned to sustain development and expand opportunity. This is not a uniquely American model; however, it is one the United States has repeatedly demonstrated at scale.
This country has always been ambitious. It has earned that reputation through repeated tests of resilience. That has been true for the past 250 years. But ambition alone is not enough. It requires a system that allows risk to be taken, absorbed, and carried forward.
Insurance and reinsurance are part of that system. They do not eliminate risk. They make it possible to move forward despite it — to build, to invest, and to rebuild when necessary. And that, more than anything, is what allows progress to endure.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
