Risk and Premium

                                                         A class of professional experts in finance and probability, called actuaries, work for insurance companies to attempt to predict the probability and severity of risk. They also take lapse rates and interest rates or other expected rates of return on investment assets into account, with the goal of setting acceptable premiums. The premium is the cost of pooling one's own risk with that of others via an insurance company and includes the insured's share of expected claims costs, administrative expenses, sales and marketing expenses, and a profit for the insurer. If a premium payer is affected by a covered risk, the insurance company, and not the insured, takes the hit. If claims are higher than expected, however, the insurance company may have to raise rates on policy holders across the board.

Modern Insurance Policies

                                                    The insurance industry grew enormously, as individuals and businesses sought to protect themselves from economic catastrophe by transferring their risks to an insurance pool. We still have commercial shipping insurance -- just as we did in the ancient world -- and we also insure against such diverse risks as fires, floods, theft, auto accidents, kidnap and ransom schemes, defaults on the part of our debtors, lawsuits and judgments, dying too early and even against the risk of living too long.

Risk Pooling

In insurance, the term "risk pooling" refers to the spreading of financial risks evenly among a large number of contributors to the program. Insurance is the transference of risks from individuals or corporations who cannot bear a possible unplanned financial catastrophe to the capital markets, which can bear them easily -- at least in theory. The capital markets, meanwhile, are generally happy to take on risk from individuals and corporations -- in exchange for a premium they believe is sufficient to cover the risk.

             

                                           Risk pooling is essential to the concept of insurance. The earliest known insurance policies were written some 5,000 years ago, to protect shippers against the loss of their cargo and crews at sea. Any one of them would be devastated by the loss of a ship. But by pooling their resources, these ancient businessmen were able to spread the risks more evenly among their numbers, so each paid a relatively small amount. Under the Babylonians, those receiving a loan to fund a shipment would pay an additional amount in exchange for a rider cancelling the loan if a shipment should be lost at sea.

What Is Life Insurance

Life insurance is a contract that pledges payment of an amount to the person assured (or his nominee) on the happening of the event insured against.

The contract is valid for payment of the insured amount during:

Ø  The date of maturity, or

Ø  Specified dates at periodic intervals, or

Ø  Unfortunate death, if it occurs earlier.

Among other things, the contract also provides for the payment of premium periodically to the Corporation by the policyholder. Life insurance is universally acknowledged to be an institution, which eliminates 'risk', substituting certainty for uncertainty and comes to the timely aid of the family in the unfortunate event of death of the breadwinner.
By and large, life insurance is civilisation's partial solution to the problems caused by death. Life insurance, in short, is concerned with two hazards that stand across the life-path of every person:

1. That of dying prematurely leaving a dependent family to fend for itself.
2. That of living till old age without visible means of support.

About Life Insurance

Life insurance in India made its debut well over 100 years ago.

In our country, which is one of the most populated in the world, the prominence of insurance is not as widely understood, as it ought to be. What follows is an attempt to acquaint readers with some of the concepts of life insurance, with special reference to LIC.

It should, however, be clearly understood that the following content is by no means an exhaustive description of the terms and conditions of an LIC policy or its benefits or privileges.

For more details, please contact our branch or divisional office. Any LIC Agent will be glad to help you choose the life insurance plan to meet your needs and render policy servicing.