Insurance is a compulsory method of laying by something as a provision against the future. It carries some degree of insurance security against adverse circular stances. It is now a branch of business that covers all kinds of future risk – the risk of life and limbs, as well as of loos through damages and destruction. The singer may ensure his voice; the dancer her toe. The businessman ensures his goods; the families man his life, and so on.
Insurance is an arrangement by which a company or the state undertakes to provide a guarantee of compensation for specified loss, damage, illness, or death in return for the payment of a specified premium.
Insurance had humble beginnings. In the early days of navigation a salvos world deposit, a sum of money with an honest man with the stipulation of receiving it back multiplied if he returned safely. It was almost a form of gambling. Now it has been made into a science. Chances are calculated on carefully compiled data, and the premium varies according to the extent of risk involved. There are experts called actuaries who advise insurance agents and companies in this regard.
As many west, and ill very recently in our country, insurance as a business was in the hands of private companies. These worked through a network of agents, enlisted ‘cases’, collected the premia, and invested them lucratively. Recently in our country, life insurance has been taken over by the state. This was out of the middle man’s profits and placed large funds for investment in healthy state enterprises.
The facilities of insurance are being daily extended. A time will come when the life of every worker will be properly insured, and in many cases, the employer will have to guarantee a premium. Social insurance: employees’ state insurance is of 1918; medical sickness, disablement, maternity benefits under the act.
