slave insurance policies which one of its subsidiaries sold 150 years ago following a new law passed in California this weekend.

Reuters reported that ACE Ltd. joins giant insurers Aetna Inc. and New York Life Insurance Co. and other insurers in possibly being asked to hand over the details following its purchase of The Insurance Co. of North America, which also sold slave policies.

The move could be the first step towards compulsory hearings to determine if they should make reparations -- possibly worth millions of dollars -- to black slaves' descendants.

The move comes soon after California's Insurance Commissioner threatened to close down some European insurers' operations in the state unless they honoured Nazi-era life insurance policies.

ACE acquired The Insurance Co. of North America last year when it bought the US property-casualty insurance operations of health insurer Cigna Corp.

According to research by authors Charles Blockson and Ron Fry in their 1977 book 'Black Genealogy', the company issued the policies.

The new law, signed by California Governor Gray Davis on Saturday, gives California's Insurance Commissioner, Harry Low, the power to ask all insurers doing business in the state to hand over details of slave policies written in the 1850s and 1860s that paid out money to slave owners rather than the families when a slave died.

Although the practice was not illegal, the law's supporters say immoral profits from slavery should be returned to slaves' descendants.

Under a typical slave policy, a slave owner would get a $500 payout from an annual premium of about $11 on an insured slave. The policies disappeared with the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865.

Slavery policies Last year, Aetna became the first American corporation to issue a public apology over its involvement in slavery, expressing regret over the slave policies it underwrote in the firm's early years in the 1850s. The Hartford, Connecticut-based insurer stopped short, however, of committing any money to restitution or compensation.

Aetna will comply with any requirements to turn over records to the California Insurance Commissioner, Aetna spokesman Fred Laberge told Reuters yesternesday. He added that Aetna only had records of five such polices, as far as he was aware.

At least three other insurers still operating in California also issued slave policies, and may come under scrutiny.

According to research by African-American historian Dee Parmer Woodtor, other companies that sold slave polices include New York Life, one of the top 10 US life insurance firms, and mutual insurers Baltimore Life Insurance Co. and American Life Insurance Co. of New York, which is owned by Mutual of America Life Insurance Co.

The now defunct life insurer Hartford Life -- which is not connected to the company of the same name owned by Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. -- is also thought to have issued slave policies.