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INSURANCE OVERVIEW

Understanding Insurance INSURANCE LIFE GENERAL

Insurance is a system to alleviate financial losses by transferring risk of loss from one entity to another. ‘Insurance’ is basically a sharing device. The losses to assets resulting from natural calamities like fire, flood, earthquake, accidents, etc. are met out of the common pool contributed by large number of persons who are exposed to similar risks.

This contribution of many is used to pay the losses suffered by unfortunate few. However the basic principle is that loss should occur as a result of natural calamities or unexpected events which are beyond the human control. Secondly insured person should not make any gains out of insurance.

It is natural to think of insurance of physical assets such as motor car insurance or fire insurance but often we forget that creator of all these assets is the human being whose efforts have gone a long way in building up the assets. In that sense, human life is a unique income generating assets. Unlike the physical assets, which decrease in value with passage of time, the individual becomes more experienced and more matured as he advances in age.

This raises his earning capacity and the purpose of life insurance is to protect the income in the event of his premature death. The individual himself also needs financial security for the old age or on his becoming permanently disabled when his income will stop. Insurance also has an element of