Concept of insurance

Human beings are exposed to different kinds of risks, Such as loss of property by fire, untimely death, and loss in accidents. They are uncertain. It is impossible to eliminate financial loss arising from an uncertain event with the help of insurance. Thus, insurance is a financial mechanism to reduce or eliminate the financial loss due to risk .However, it can neither eliminate nor reduce the risk, but only provides protection against them .Insurance is a way of sharing a risk among the peoples.

                     The nature of insurance can be expressed clearly by an example. Suppose there are 20,000 houses in a village each values Rs: 200000. On the basis of experience it is ascertained that four houses are destroyed by fire each year. Thus, it is clear that fire will catch in four houses next year. But, it cannot be ascertained as to which house will catch house. Nobody knows who those unfortunate individuals will be. One cannot foretell when and who would suffer loss. But everyone is afraid of the risk to which they are exposed. That is, everyone is likely to suffer from a loss of Rs: 200000 which is a big burden for an individual. They can find a method of providing protection against this risk by establishing a common fund to which each contributes Rs: 80 very years. The four unfortunate householders can be compensated by the created fund. It is in this cooperative measures that insurance originated. In fact, the most important from of risk transfer is insurance.

               Insurance protects a person and his dependents from loss arising from future uncertain events such as fire, flood, accidents, early death, etc. It should be remembered that the loss cannot be eliminated by insurance but it spreads over a large number of persons. The function of insurance is to distribute the loss of few persons into many persons. We have to make the idea that the insurance is a process of sharing risks.