I've done a presentation on the Slavery Era Insurance Registry at a number of conferences. Much of what is in Valencia's post of the document by Kevin McCarthy covers the subject with a few additions.

I've been out to California to look at the original documents multiple times and there is more data that did not get into the list generated for the website at the California Dept of Insurance.

Copies of the originals were made and distributed to institutions (libraries) across the state, so anyone living in California can see the files without having to drive to Sacramento.

I came across one other source of slave insurance policies and this was on the East Coast and involved the Baltimore Life Insurance Company. Author Jerry Hynson produced an abstract of them in a book whose image accompanies this post.

Finally, in a very recent development, a colleague & friend of mine from Texas is involved in creation of an archive of material from a very prominent family that moved from Virginia to Texas and they were associated with the insurance business among other endeavors and she stated that she has seen a number of actual slave insurance polices in their records.

FYI, in 2007, I believe, I wrote an article on the the Slavery Era Insurance Registry for the NGS NewsMagazine.