Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to protect against the risk of a contingent or uncertain loss.
Life insurance is a contract between an insurance policy holder and an insurer or assurer, where the insurer promises to pay a designated beneficiary a sum of money upon the death of an insured person. Depending on the contract, other events such as terminal illness or critical illness can also trigger payment. The policyholder typically pays a premium, either regularly or as one lump sum. The benefits may include other expenses, such as funeral expenses.
Vehicle insurance is insurance for cars, trucks, motorcycles, and other road vehicles. Its primary use is to provide financial protection against physical damage or bodily injury resulting from traffic collisions and against liability that could also arise from incidents in a vehicle. Vehicle insurance may additionally offer financial protection against theft of the vehicle, and against damage to the vehicle sustained from events other than traffic collisions, such as keying, weather or natural disasters, and damage sustained by colliding with stationary objects. The specific terms of vehicle insurance vary with legal regulations in each region.
Reinsurance is insurance that an insurance company purchases from another insurance company to insulate itself from the risk of a major claims event. With reinsurance, the company passes on ("cedes") some part of its own insurance liabilities to the other insurance company. The company that purchases the reinsurance policy is referred to as the "ceding company" or "cedent". The company issuing the reinsurance policy is referred to as the "reinsurer". In the classic case, reinsurance allows insurance companies to remain solvent after major claims events, such as major disasters like hurricanes or wildfires. In addition to its basic role in risk management, reinsurance is sometimes used to reduce the ceding company's capital requirements, or for tax mitigation or other purposes.
In finance, systemic risk is the risk of collapse of an entire financial system or entire market, as opposed to the risk associated with any one individual entity, group or component of a system, that can be contained therein without harming the entire system. It can be defined as "financial system instability, potentially catastrophic, caused or exacerbated by idiosyncratic events or conditions in financial intermediaries". It refers to the risks imposed by interlinkages and interdependencies in a system or market, where the failure of a single entity or cluster of entities can cause a cascading failure, which could potentially bankrupt or bring down the entire system or market. It is also sometimes erroneously referred to as "systematic risk".
Financial reinsurance is a form of reinsurance which is focused more on capital management than on risk transfer. In the non-life insurance segment of the insurance industry this class of transactions is often referred to as finite reinsurance.
In accounting, liquidity is a measure of the ability of a debtor to pay their debts as and when they fall due. It is usually expressed as a ratio or a percentage of current liabilities. Liquidity is the ability to pay short-term obligations.
Loss reserving is the calculation of the required reserves for a tranche of insurance business, including outstanding claims reserves.
Self-funded health care, also known as Administrative Services Only (ASO), is a self insurance arrangement in the United States whereby an employer provides health or disability benefits to employees using the company's own funds. This is different from fully insured plans where the employer contracts an insurance company to cover the employees and dependents.
Solvency II Directive 2009 is a Directive in European Union law that codifies and harmonises the EU insurance regulation. Primarily this concerns the amount of capital that EU insurance companies must hold to reduce the risk of insolvency.
The CAMELS rating is a supervisory rating system originally developed in the U.S. to classify a bank's overall condition. It is applied to every bank and credit union in the U.S. and is also implemented outside the U.S. by various banking supervisory regulators.
A loss ratio is a ratio of losses to gains, used normally in a financial context. It is the opposite of the gross profit ratio.
Asset/liability modeling is the process used to manage the business and financial objectives of a financial institution or an individual through an assessment of the portfolio assets and liabilities in an integrated manner. The process is characterized by an ongoing review, modification and revision of asset and liability management strategies so that sensitivity to interest rate changes are confined within acceptable tolerance levels.
The statutory and fiduciary mandate of the State Board of Administration of Florida (SBA) is to invest, manage and safeguard assets of the Florida Retirement System (FRS) Trust Fund as well as the assets of a variety of other funds. The SBA manages 25 different investment funds and trust clients.
The Empowering Patients First Act is legislation sponsored by Rep. Tom Price, first introduced as H.R. 3400 in the 111th Congress. The bill was initially intended to be a Republican alternative to the America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, but has since been positioned as a potential replacement to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The bill was introduced in the 112th Congress as H.R. 3000, and in the 113th Congress as H.R. 2300. As of October 2014, the bill has 58 cosponsors. An identical version of the bill has been introduced in the Senate by Senator John McCain as S. 1851.
Captive insurance is an alternative to self-insurance in which a parent group or groups create a licensed insurance company to provide coverage for itself. The main purpose of doing so is to avoid using traditional commercial insurance companies, which have volatile pricing and may not meet the specific needs of the company. By creating their own insurance company, the parent company can reduce their costs, insure difficult risks, have direct access to reinsurance markets, and increase cash flow. When a company creates a captive they are indirectly able to evaluate the risks of subsidiaries, write policies, set premiums and ultimately either return unused funds in the form of profits, or invest them for future claim payouts. Captive insurance companies sometimes insure the risks of the group's customers. This is an alternative form of risk management that is becoming a more practical and popular means through which companies can protect themselves financially while having more control over how they are insured.
A financial ratio or accounting ratio states the relative magnitude of two selected numerical values taken from an enterprise's financial statements. Often used in accounting, there are many standard ratios used to try to evaluate the overall financial condition of a corporation or other organization. Financial ratios may be used by managers within a firm, by current and potential shareholders (owners) of a firm, and by a firm's creditors. Financial analysts use financial ratios to compare the strengths and weaknesses in various companies. If shares in a company are publicly listed, the market price of the shares is used in certain financial ratios.
A systemically important financial institution (SIFI) is a bank, insurance company, or other financial institution whose failure might trigger a financial crisis. They are colloquially referred to as "too big to fail".
At the heart of the prudential Solvency II directive, the own risk and solvency assessment (ORSA) is defined as a set of processes constituting a tool for decision-making and strategic analysis. It aims to assess, in a continuous and prospective way, the overall solvency needs related to the specific risk profile of the insurance company. Risk Management and own risk and solvency assessment is a similar regulation that has been enacted in the US by the NAIC. Other jurisdictions are enacting similar regulations to comply with the Insurance Core Principle 16 enacted by the IAIS.
The Nonadmitted and Reinsurance Reform Act of 2010 is a United States law regulating the sale of insurance in states where the insurer is usually not authorized to sell insurance. It prevents states other than the home state of a U.S. insurance company from imposing regulations or taxes on the sale of nonadmitted insurance.
