CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Insurance is an important area of the business service industry. The U.S insurance industry is one of the largest revenue generators and is the fifth industry sector in the center. Authord, (2010).Insurance is the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another in exchange for payment. It is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. An insurer, or insurance carrier, is a company selling the insurance, the insured, or policy holder, is the person or entity buying the insurance policy. The amount to be charged for a certain amount of insurance coverage is called the PREMIUM. Risk management, the practice of appraising and controlling risk, has evolved as a discrete yield of study and practice.Lamba, (2009). The transaction involves the insured assuming a guaranteed and known relatively promise to compensate (indemnify) the insured in case of a financial (personal) loss. The insured reviews a contract called the insurance policy, which detects the conditions and circumstances under which the insured will be financially compensated. Chiemere, (2012). Insurance involves posting funds from many entities (known as exposures) to pay for the losses that some may incur. The insured entities are therefore protected from risk for a fee; with the fee being dependent upon the frequency and severity of event occurring. In order to be insurable, the risk insured against must meet certain characteristics in order to be in insurable risk. Insurance is a commercial enterprise and a major part of the financial services industry, but individual entities can also self – insure through saving money for possible future losses. In some sense, we say that insurance appears simultaneously with the appearance of human society. We know of two types of economics in human societies. Natural or non – momentary economics (using barter and trade with no centralized or standardized set of financial instruments) and more modern monetary economics (with markets, currency, financial instruments and so on). The former is more primitive and the insurance in such economics entails agreements of mutual aid. If one family house is destroyed the neighbors are committed to help rebuild. Often informal or formally intrinsic to local religious customs, this type of insurance has survived to the present day in some countries where a modern money economy with its financial instruments is not widespread. The insurance company is a company that offers insurances policy either by selling directly to an individual or through another source such as an employee’s benefit plan. An insurance company is usually comprised of multiple insurance agents. An insurance company can specialize in one type of insurance, such as life insurance, health insurance, auto insurance or offer multiple types of insurance. Encompass into the insurance policies is the insurance service which the insurance company decided to specialize in offering the public.Martins, (2007).