page_title: Tontine
section_title: Projects funded by tontines
hierarchical_section_title: Tontine / Projects funded by tontines
caption_attribution_description: 1797 oil on linen of the Tontine Coffee House, Merchant's Coffee House, and Wall Street, leading down to the East River. By Francis Guy (1760–1820).
context_page_description: A tontine is an investment plan for raising capital, devised in the 17th century and relatively widespread in the 18th and 19th centuries.
  It enables subscribers to share the risk of living a long life by combining features of a group annuity with a kind of mortality lottery. Each subscriber pays an agreed sum into the fund and thereafter receives a periodical payout. As members die, their payout entitlements devolve to the other participants, and so the value of each continuing payout increases. On the death of the last member, the scheme is wound up.
  Tontines are regulated in Europe under the Directive 2002/83/EC of the European Parliament and are still common in France.
  The new Pan-European Pension legislation coming into force in August 2020 contains provisions which specifically pave the way for a next-generation of pension products that abide by the "tontine principle".
  Questionable practices by U.S. life insurers in 1906 led to the Armstrong Investigation in the United States restricting some forms of tontines. Nevertheless, in March 2017, The New York Times reported that tontines were getting fresh consideration as a way for people to get steady retirement income.
context_section_description: Tontines were often used to raise funds for private or public works projects. These sometimes contained the word "tontine" in their name.
  Some notable tontine-funded projects included:
  Richmond Bridge, across the River Thames west of London, was financed through a tontine authorised by an Act of Parliament in 1773. Once the bridge was completed in 1777, it was the toll charged to cross the bridge that was shared between the investors, each receiving a larger share as the others died. The last survivor received the entire toll income until his death when the toll booth on the south bank was demolished and the bridge became free to cross. Although the bridge was widened on the upstream side in 1938 using the original facing stones, the bridge remains the oldest bridge crossing the Thames. 
  The Tontine Hotel in Ironbridge, Shropshire, stands prominently at one end of the Iron Bridge from which the town takes its name: it was built in 1780–84 by the proprietors of the bridge to accommodate tourists who came to view this wonder of the industrial age.
  The Tontine Hotel and Assembly Rooms, Glasgow, were funded through two tontines of 1781 and 1796.
  The Tontine Coffee House on Wall Street in New York City, built in 1792, was the first home of the New York Stock Exchange.
  The first Freemasons' Hall, London. Subscribers were able to nominate someone other than themselves as the person on whose life the share was staked.  On the subscriber's death they could leave their share to that person, or to anyone else. The scheme raised £5,000, but cost £21,750 in interest over its 87-year life.
  The Tontine Hotel, Greenock, Inverclyde, Scotland, was built in 1803.
  The Cleveland Tontine hotel, near Ingleby Arncliffe, North Yorkshire, originally a coaching inn on the Yarm to Thirsk turnpike road, was financed using a tontine in 1804.
caption: The Tontine Coffee House (at left) on Wall Street, New York City
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