The Basis of Insurance
Life insurance is among the largest and most important industries in the United States and worldwide for that matter. There are five categories when it comes to insurance policies: fire, marine, casualty, surety, and life. In combination, these five forces control billions and billions of dollars in assets and collect more than fifteen billion dollars per year in premiums. It is extremely rare to come across a business, or even a family home, that doesn’t have some form of protection in regard to insurance, especially life insurance.
The main purpose of insurance is to offset the possibility of loss resulting from a number of potential tragedies that expose themselves to a person or his/her property. When it comes to the question of what risk entails, it is defined in The Dictionary of Insurance Terms, published by the Chamber of Commerce in the United States, as “a chance of loss.” Webster defines risk in the same way. Another term commonly used in insurance parlance is “hazard.”
It would help in the understanding of insurance however, if we would distinguish between these three terms: “risk,” “chance of loss,” and “hazard” independently of one another.
In the abstract, risk is defined as uncertainty, with reference to the uncertainty of financial loss and has little to do with the loss itself. Risk principally has to do with the uncertainty of a loss, with the degree of risk measured by the probable variation of actual experience from expected experience.
Chance of loss is best described as a fraction or percentage. It indicates the probable number and severity of losses out of a given number of exposures. If you flip a coin, your chance of loss is
