Thinking about the rise of modern insurance during the 16th-18th Century period (like maritime insurance, property insurance, etc), and a question occurred to me -- if making insurance reliably profitable is based on spreading risk, then it stands that the more capital (or credit, etc) an insurer has to back up their claims, the more policies they can take on, and the more reliable their profits. That also means that then as now, small insurance pools can easily bankrupt an insurer, while the ones who were richer to start with can more easily compound their wealth.
So my question: Did any monarch of this period ever think to himself, "I can get in on that". After all, they've got some of the most readily available cash around (and what they lack, they can tax or borrow easily enough), so start-up capital isn't a problem. If no monarch ever did, why not? And what would it have taken for them to try? How would political economic history be affected? After all, the logic behind having a "royal maritime insurance program" has a lot of similarities to that behind modern ideas like UHC.