Types of insurance companies
Insurance companies may be classified
as
In most countries, life and non-life insurers
are subject to different regulations, tax and accounting rules. The main
reason for the distinction between the two types of company is that life
business is very long term in nature - coverage for life assurance or a
pension can cover risks over many decades. By contrast, non-life insurance
cover usually covers shorter periods, such as one year.
Companies may sell both life and non life
insurance, in which case they are sometimes known as composite
insurance companies.
Insurance companies are also often classified
as either mutual or stock companies. This is more of a
traditional distinction as true mutual companies are becoming rare. Mutual
companies are owned by the policyholders, while stockholders, (who may or
may not own policies) own stock insurance companies.
Reinsurance companies sell insurance cover to other insurance companies.
This helps insurance companies to spread their risks, and protects them
from very large losses. The reinsurance market is dominated by a few very
large companies, with huge reserves.
Life insurance and saving
As well as paying out a sum of money on
death, many life insurance contracts also pay out a sum of money after a
given time (in which case it is known as an endowment policy),
and may also pay out a cash value if the policy is cancelled early. In many
countries, such as the US and the UK, tax law provides that the interest
on this cash value is not taxable under certain strict circumstances.
This leads to widespread use of life insurance
as a tax-efficient method of saving as well as protection in the event of
early death. Wealthy individuals buy life insurance policies as a means
for avoiding income taxes and estate taxes.
If the tax benefit exceeds the fees
charged by the insurance company for maintaining the policy, then the policy
serves as a life insurance tax shelter. There
is much controversy surrounding this practice, and the financial industry
is deeply divided about whether or not these practices work as advertised.
Criticisms of the insurance industry
[]
Lack of knowledge of policyholders
Insurance policies can be complex and
some policyholders may not understand all the fees included in a policy.
As a result, people could buy policies at unfavorable terms. In response
to these issues, governments often make detailed regulations that set down
minimum standards for policies and govern how they may be advertised and
sold.
[]
Redlining
Location is one of the variables used
to set rates. Insurers are also starting to use credit "scores", occupation,
marital status, and education level to set rates. Many consider these practices
to be "unfair" and even racist. An interesting refutation to this is that
the job of an insurance underwriter is to properly categorize a given risk
as to the likelihood that the loss will occur. Any factor that causes a
greater likelihood of loss should in theory, be charged a higher rate. This
is a basic principle of insurance and must be followed for insurance companies
or groups to operate properly, even for non-profit groups. Thus, discrimination
of potential insured's by legitimate factors is central to insurance. Therefore
the only thing that can be considered legitimately "unfair" are practices
that discriminate against a given group without actual factors that show
that the group is a higher risk.
[Long Term Care
Insurance ]
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Introduction
In insurance, the insured makes
payments called "premiums" to an insurer, and in
return is able to claim a payment from the insurer
if the insured suffers some kind of loss. This relationship
is usually drawn up in a formal legal contract.
In one classic example of insurance,
a ship-owner insures a ship and receives payment
if the ship is damaged or destroyed. This example
is one of the earliest uses and developments of
concepts like insurance. Interestingly, ships are
now more often insured through risk pooling and
spreading organizations such as Lloyd's of London
because the loss of a large ship going down is too
great for one insurer to accept.
In the case of annuities, such
as a pension, similar concepts apply, but in some
sense in the reverse. When applied to annuities,
the terms risk and loss are somewhat
different from traditional insurance as they concern
the chances of living beyond life expectancy and
the need for income during the period between annuitization
and death.
Insurance attempts to quantify
risk by pooling together a large number of risks.
This makes use of the law of large numbers. As applied
to insurance, this means that the greater the number
of similar risks, the greater accuracy with which
insurers can estimate the overall risk.
For example, many individual people
purchase health insurance policies and they each pay
a small monthly or yearly premium to an insurance
company. When a policyholder gets ill, the insurance
company provides money to cover medical treatment.
For some individuals the insurance benefits may
total far more money than they have ever paid into
the insurance policy. Others may never make a claim.
When averaged out over all of the people buying
policies, value of the claims even out. Insurance
companies set their premiums based on their calculated
payouts. They plan to take in more money (in premiums
and in profit from the float, see below)
than they pay out in the end to cover expenses.
For-profit insurance companies set their rates to
make a profit rather than to break even.
Insurance companies also earn
investment profits, because they have the use of
the premium money from the time they receive it
until the time they need it to pay claims. This
money is called the float. When the investments
of float are successful, they may earn large profits,
even if the insurance company pays out in claims
every penny received as premiums. In fact, most
insurance companies pay out more money than they
receive in premiums. The excess amount that they
pay to policyholders is the cost of float.
An insurance company will profit if they invest
the money at a greater return than their cost of
float.
An insurance contract or policy
will set out in detail the exact circumstances under
which a benefit payment will be made and the amount
of the premiums.
History of insurance
Insurance has been an institution of human society for thousands of years,
having been practiced by Babylonian traders as long
ago as the 2nd millennium BCE. Eventually it was
given legal mention in the Code of Hammurabi, and
practiced by early Mediterranean sailing merchants.
The Greeks and Romans had "benevolent societies"
which acted to care for the families and funeral
expenses of members upon death. Guilds in the middle
ages served a similar purpose. Insurance became
much more sophisticated in post-Renaissance Europe,
and specialized varieties developed. In America,
Benjamin Franklin helped to popularize and make
standard the practice of insurance, particularly
against fire. The 19th century saw a rise in the
government regulation of insurance, and the 20th
century saw further specialization and, in the United
States, a bit of deregulation that allowed other
financial institutions, such as banks, to offer
insurance. The ever-increasing ability of science
to predict catastrophes of any measure or variety
continues to affect the way insurance is conducted.
Types of insurance
There are a number of different
types of insurance:
- Automobile insurance, also
known as Auto insurance, Car insurance and in
the UK as Motor insurance, is probably the most
common form of insurance and may cover both
legal liability claims against the driver and
loss of or damage to the vehicle itself.
- Property insurance provides
protection against risks to property, such as
fire, theft or weather damage. This includes
specialized forms of insurance such as
fire insurance,
flood insurance,
earthquake insurance,
home insurance or
boiler insurance.
-
Casualty insurance insures against accidents, not necessarily tied to any specific
piece of property.
-
Liability insurance
covers legal claims against the insured. For
example, a doctor may purchase insurance to
cover any legal claims against him if he were
to make a mistake in treating a patient.
-
Financial loss insurance protects individuals and companies against various financial
risks. For example, a business might purchase
cover to protect it from loss of sales if a
fire in a factory prevented it from carrying
out its business for a time. Insurance might
also cover failure of a creditor to pay money
it owes to the insured.
Fidelity bonds and
surety bonds are included in this category.
-
Title insurance provides a guarantee on research done on
public records affecting title to
real property, usually in conjunction with a
search done at the time of a
real estate transaction, such as a sale, or a
mortgage.
-
Health insurance covers medical bills incurred because of sickness or accidents.
-
Life insurance provides a benefit to a decedent's family or other designated
beneficiary, usually to make up for their loss
of his or her
income.
-
Annuities provide
a stream of payments and are generally classified
as insurance because they are issued by insurance
companies and regulated as insurance. Annuities
and
pensions that pay a benefit for life are sometimes
regarded as insurance against the possibility
that a retiree will outlive his or her financial
resources. In that sense, they are the opposite
of life insurance.
-
Credit insurance pays some or all of a loan back when certain things happen to
the borrower like unemployment, disability,
or death.
-
Terrorism insurance
-
Political risk insurance can be taken out by businesses with operations in countries in
which there is a risk that revolution or other
political conditions will result in a loss
A single policy may cover risks
in one or more of the above categories. For example,
car insurance would typically cover both property
risk (covering the risk of theft or damage to the
car) and liability risk (covering legal claims from
say, causing an accident). A
homeowner's insurance policy in the US
typically includes property insurance covering damage
to the home and the owner's belongings, liability
insurance covering certain legal claims against
the owner, and even a small amount of health insurance
for medical expenses of guests who are injured on
the owner's property.
Potential sources of risk that
may give rise to claims are known as
perils. Examples of perils might be fire, theft,
earthquake, hurricane and many other potential risks.
An insurance policy will set out in details which
perils are covered by the policy and which are not.
[Standard Automobile Insurance
]
Health insurance
Health insurance is one of the
most controversial forms of insurance because of
the conflict between the need for the insurance
company to remain solvent versus the need of its
customers to remain healthy, which many view as
a basic human right. This conflict exists in a
liberal healthcare system because
of the unpredictability of how patients respond
to medical treatment. Suppose a large number of
customers of a particular insurance company were
to contract a rare disease costing 100 million dollars
to fight for each patient. The insurance company
would be faced with the choice of either charging
all its future customers astronomical premiums (thus
losing customers and going out of business), paying
all claims without complaint (thus going out of
business) or fighting the customers in an attempt
to deny the costly treatment (thus outraging patients
and their families, and becoming a target for lawsuits
and legislation).
Many countries have made the societal
choice to avoid this important conflict by
nationalizing the health industry so
that doctors, nurses, and other medical workers
become state employees, all funded by taxes; or
setting up a national health insurance plan that
all citizens pay into with tax payments, and which
pays private doctors for health care. These national
health care systems also have their problems. Many
countries have citizen groups which protest bureaucracy
and cost-cutting measures that unduly delay medical
treatment.
In the United States, health insurance
is made more complicated by Federal Medicare/Medicaid
programs, which have had the unintended consequence
of determining the price of medical procedures.
Many suspect that these prices are set independently
of medical necessity or actual cost. A physician
who refuses to accept a Medicare/Medicaid payment
will be banned from accepting any such payments
for a number of years, regardless of the reason
for rejecting the payment or the amount offered.
In either case, this means that private insurers
have little incentive to pay more than the government
does.
Some common complaints about private
health insurance companies are discussed in the
health insurance article.
[]
See Also
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