PANTA FAMILY


Wednesday, January 31, 2007

The Market of Securities

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Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Some Steps Towards Bad Credit Repair

Credit is an essential tool to most people's lives. A good credit rating allows for many things that we take for granted: having a credit card, being able to rent property, qualifying for in-store financing etc. . . If you fail to make payments towards a creditor this will affect your credit report collected by your credit bureau, and will make doing the above things difficult if not impossible. When your credit rating becomes poor, you must take steps as soon as possible to repair it. Credit repair can be a slow process, and requires that you build a better credit rating over time. Here are some steps you should take:

1) Add accounts to your credit report. If you are denied for credit, you should immediately obtain your credit report from the credit bureau in question. Once you have the report you should examine it closely for errors. In the event that there are no errors, you may find that your credit rating is "poor" not because of outstanding debts, but because you don't have enough of a credit history to inspire a good rating.

Many types of credit from smaller organizations are not tracked by credit bureaus. Things like gas-cards or department store cards are not usually on your credit report. As long as the account is verifiable, most credit bureaus will add it to your file. They are not obligated to do so, and thus usually charge a fee for this service. By adding these accounts to your credit report you will establish a better credit rating.

2) Credit Counseling. Once you become mired in debt, the process can feed on itself, and it can be difficult to get out of it. If you find yourself having continual problems with your credit repair, you should consider credit counseling. It's important to notice the distinction between a credit counselor and a credit repair company. The former is usually a non-profit service that offers advice and guidance on credit repair, while the latter are for-profit companies of dubious ethics that generally charge fees for steps that you can easily take care of yourself. A good credit counselor will help you make a realistic budget and stick to it, and help you make practical decisions with regards to your outstanding debts.

Visit our web site because we now provide Free Sample credit repair software to help you to begin the process of repairing your credit by showing you how, if you qualify, to get a free credit report, and how to rate your Credit Score (in the same ways done by major banks and finance companies). Reviewing your Credit Score and repairing your reports can save you money by helping you secure lower interest rates.

Next, order Credit Repair Software which includes a Tool Box of legal form Credit Repair Letters and Credit Repair Instructions. Try our free sample Credit Report Repair Software to help you get started repairing your credit reports now. You should also order the three major Credit Bureau Reports you will need, to help you view and repair your credit history. Visit our web site for more information.

By adding whatever accounts you have in good standing to your credit report, and seeking credit counseling if necessary, you will make headway into your ultimate goal of credit repair. The difficult thing about credit is that it takes a long time to build a good credit rating, and a very short time to destroy it. When your credit rating has been marred you have to understand that there is no quick solution: you will have to build your credit rating again - essentially from scratch. If you avoid the temptations of credit repair companies that promise a quick and easy credit repair for a fee, and think instead of long term changes to your budgeting and spending habits, you will - over time - be successful in credit repair.

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Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Debt Consolidation In Spite Of Credit

There are two types of personal debt consolidation loans, secured and unsecured. An unsecured loan is basically just a promise to pay back the money borrowed. A secured loan means you put up something for collateral. If you don’t pay back the money, the lender can repossess that collateral. For instance, if you put your house up for collateral and you fail to make payments, you can lose your home.

If you have a mortgage, you can use that to consolidate your debt. You can consolidate your outstanding debt into a new first mortgage or you can take out a second mortgage. If you are unable to keep up with the payments, though, you risk losing your home.

You can also apply for a home equity loan. This is a loan based on the value of your home. If you still owe on your mortgage, the equity is the difference between the value of your house and the amount you still owe. With a home equity loan, you are using your home as collateral. Here too, there are chances that you may loose your house, if you don’t pay.

The advantages and disadvantages to both a second mortgage and a home equity loan are similar to that of a personal debt consolidation loan. However, the interest rates are usually better.

If your credit is poor, if you’ve been late in making payments on credit cards, or even if you’ve filed bankruptcy, you may still qualify for a debt consolidation loan or for a second mortgage on your home. Don’t be afraid of applying because of bad credit.

Yet another way to consolidate your debt is to work with a consumer credit counseling agency, also known as debt consolidation services. These agencies work out payment arrangements with your credit card companies. They then combine all of your monthly payments into one payment. Debt consolidation services usually get paid by the credit card companies for collecting your money, but some also charge consumers a fee. To find debt consolidation services agencies, type “debt consolidation company USA” into Google or any other search engine.

There are some debts that usually can’t be included in personal debt consolidation loans, second mortgages, or home equity loans. These include things like student loans, money owed to the IRS, and child support. These usually are not included in arrangements made by consumer credit counseling agencies, either.

As you can see, there are a number of options for consolidating your debt. You’ll need to investigate them carefully to see which one is right for you. In some cases, debt consolidation may not be enough and the best choice may be to file bankruptcy. Talk to an attorney to find out more about that.

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Saturday, January 13, 2007

Business finance

In the case of a company, managerial finance or corporate finance is the task of providing the funds for the corporations' activities. It generally involves balancing risk and profitability. Long term funds would be provided by ownership equity and long-term credit, often in the form of bonds. These decisions lead to the company's capital structure. Short term funding or working capital is mostly provided by banks extending a line of credit.

On the bond market, borrowers package their debt in the form of bonds. The borrower receives the money it borrows by selling the bond, which includes a promise to repay the value of the bond with interest. The purchaser of a bond can resell the bond, so the actual recipient of interest payments can change over time. Bonds allow lenders to recoup the value of their loan by simply selling the bond.

Another business decision concerning finance is investment, or fund management. An investment is an acquisition of an asset in the hopes that it will maintain or increase its value. In investment management - in choosing a portfolio - one has to decide what, how much and when to invest. In doing so, one needs to
  • Identify relevant objectives and constraints: institution or individual - goals - time horizon - risk aversion - tax considerations
  • Identify the appropriate strategy: active vs passive - hedging strategy
  • Measure the portfolio performance

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Friday, January 12, 2007

Finance

Finance studies and addresses the ways in which individuals, businesses, and organizations raise, allocate, and use monetary resources over time, taking into account the risks entailed in their projects. The term finance may thus incorporate any of the following:

  • The study of money and other assets;
  • The management and control of those assets;
  • Profiling and managing project risks;
  • As a verb, "to finance" is to provide funds for business.

The activity of finance is the application of a set of techniques that individuals and organizations (entities) use to manage their financial affairs, particularly the differences between income and expenditure and the risks of their investments.

An entity whose income exceeds its expenditure can lend or invest the excess income. On the other hand, an entity whose income is less than its expenditure can raise capital by borrowing or selling equity claims, decreasing its expenses, or increasing its income. The lender can find a borrower, a financial intermediary, such as a bank or buy notes or bonds in the bond market. The lender receives interest, the borrower pays a higher interest than the lender receives, and the financial intermediary pockets the difference.

A bank aggregates the activities of many borrowers and lenders. A bank accepts deposits from lenders, on which it pays the interest. The bank then lends these deposits to borrowers. Banks allow borrowers and lenders of different sizes to coordinate their activity. Banks are thus compensators of money flows in space since they allow different lenders and borrowers to meet, and in time, since every borrower, in theory, will eventually pay back.

A specific example of corporate finance is the sale of stock by a company to institutional investors like investment banks, who in turn generally sell it to the public. The stock gives whoever owns it part ownership in that company. If you buy one share of XYZ Inc, and they have 100 shares available, you are 1/100 owner of that company. You own 1/100 of the net difference between assets and liabilities on the balance sheet. Of course, in return for the stock, the company receives cash, which it uses to expand its business in a process called "equity financing". Equity financing mixed with the sale of bonds (or any other debt financing) is called the company's capital structure.

Finance is used by individuals (personal finance), by governments (public finance), by businesses (corporate finance), etc., as well as by a wide variety of organizations including schools and non-profit organizations. In general, the goals of each of the above activities are achieved through the use of appropriate financial instruments, with consideration to their institutional setting.

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Tuesday, January 9, 2007

Legal Aspects

There are essentially two types of legal mortgage.

Mortgage by demise

In a mortgage by demise, the creditor becomes the owner of the mortgaged property until the loan is repaid in full (known as "redemption"). This kind of mortgage takes the form of a conveyance of the property to the creditor, with a condition that the property will be returned on redemption.

This is an older form of legal mortgage and is less common than a mortgage by legal charge. It is no longer available in the UK, by virtue of the Land Registration Act 2002.

Mortgage by legal charge

In a mortgage by legal charge, the debtor remains the legal owner of the property, but the creditor gains sufficient rights over it to enable them to enforce their security, such as a right to take possession of the property or sell it.

To protect the lender, a mortgage by legal charge is usually recorded in a public register. Since mortgage debt is often the largest debt owed by the debtor, banks and other mortgage lenders run title searches of the real property to make certain that there are no mortgages already registered on the debtor's property which might have higher priority. Tax liens, in some cases, will come ahead of mortgages. For this reason, if a borrower has delinquent property taxes, the bank will often pay them to prevent the lienholder from foreclosing and wiping out the mortgage.

This type of mortgage is common in the United States and, since 1925, it has been the usual form of mortgage in England and Wales (it is now the only form - see above).

In Scotland, the mortgage by legal charge is also known as standard security.

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Participants and variant terminology

Each legal system tends to share certain concepts but vary in the terminology and jargon they use.In general terms the main participants in a mortgage are:

Creditor

The creditor has legal rights to the debt secured by the mortgage and often makes a loan to the debtor of the purchase money for the property. Typically, creditors are banks, insurers or other financial institutions who make loans available for the purpose of real estate purchase.

A creditor is sometimes referred to as the mortgagee or lender.

Debtor

The debtor[s] must meet the requirements of the mortgage conditions (and often the loan conditions) imposed by the creditor in order to avoid the creditor enacting provisions of the mortgage to recover the debt. Typically the debtors will be the individual home-owners, landlords or businesses who are purchasing their property by way of a loan.

A debtor is sometimes referred to as the mortgagor, borrower, or obligor.

Other participants

Due to the complicated legal exchange, or conveyance, of the property, one or both of the main participants are likely to require legal representation. The terminology varies with legal jurisdiction; see lawyer, solicitor and conveyancer.

Because of the complex nature of many markets the debtor may approach a mortgage broker or financial adviser to help them source an appropriate creditor typically by finding the most competitive loan. Recently, many US consumers (particularly higher income borrowers) are choosing to work with Certified Mortgage Planners, industry experts that work closely with Certified Financial Planners to align the home finance position(s) of homeowners with their larger financial portfolio(s).

The debt is sometimes referred to as the hypothecation, which may make use of the services of a hypothecary to assist in the hypothecation.

In addition to borrowers, lenders, government sponsored agencies, private agencies; there is also a fifth class of participants who are the source of funds - the Life Insurers, Pension Funds, etc.

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Monday, January 8, 2007

Types of Mortgage Instruments

Two types of mortgage instruments are used in the United States: the mortgage (sometimes called a mortgage deed) and the deed of trust.

The mortgage

In all but a few states, a mortgage creates a lien on the title to the mortgaged property. Foreclosure of that lien almost always requires a judicial proceeding declaring the debt to be due and in default and ordering a sale of the land to pay the debt.

The deed of trust

The deed of trust is a deed by the borrower to a trustee for the purposes of securing a debt. In most states, it also merely creates a lien on the title and not a title transfer, regardless of its terms. It differs from a mortgage in that, in many states, it can be foreclosed by a non-judicial sale held by the trustee. It is also possible to foreclose them through a judicial proceeding.

Most "mortgages" in California are actually deeds of trust. The effective difference is that the foreclosure process can be much faster for a deed of trust than for a mortgage, on the order of 3 months rather than a year.

Deeds of trust to secure repayments of debts should not be confused with deeds to trustees to create trusts for other purposes, such as estate planning. Though there are superficial similarities in the form, many states hold deeds of trust to secure repayment of debts do not create true trust arrangements.

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Sunday, January 7, 2007

Mortgage by legal charge

In a mortgage by legal charge, the debtor remains the legal owner of the property, but the creditor gains sufficient rights over it to enable them to enforce their security, such as a right to take possession of the property or sell it.

To protect the lender, a mortgage by legal charge is usually recorded in a public register. Since mortgage debt is often the largest debt owed by the debtor, banks and other mortgage lenders run title searches of the real property to make certain that there are no mortgages already registered on the debtor's property which might have higher priority. Tax liens, in some cases, will come ahead of mortgages. For this reason, if a borrower has delinquent property taxes, the bank will often pay them to prevent the lienholder from foreclosing and wiping out the mortgage.

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Saturday, January 6, 2007

History of Mortgage

At common law, a mortgage was a conveyance of land that on its face was absolute and conveyed a fee simple estate, but which was in fact conditional, and would be of no effect if certain conditions were not met --- usually, but not necessarily, the repayment of a debt to the original landowner. Hence the word "mortgage," Law French for "dead pledge;" that is, it was absolute in form, and unlike a "live gage", was not conditionally dependent on its repayment solely from raising and selling crops or livestock, or of simply giving the fruits of crops and livestock coming from the land that was mortgaged. The mortgage debt remained in effect whether or not the land could successfully produce enough income to repay the debt. In theory, a mortgage required no further steps to be taken by the creditor, such as acceptance of crops and livestock, for repayment.

The difficulty with this arrangement was that the lender was absolute owner of the property and could sell it, or refuse to reconvey it to the borrower, who was in a weak position. Increasingly the courts of equity began to protect the borrower's interests, so that a borrower came to have an absolute right to insist on reconveyance on redemption. This right of the borrower is known as the "equity of redemption".

This arrangement, whereby the mortgagee (the lender) was on theory the absolute owner, but in practice had few of the practical rights of ownership, was seen in many jurisdictions as being awkwardly artificial. By statute the common law position was altered so that the mortgagor would retain ownership, but the mortgagee's rights, such as foreclosure, the power of sale and the right to take possession would be protected.

In the United States, those states that have reformed the nature of mortgages in this way are known as lien states. A similar effect was achieved in England and Wales by the Law of Property Act 1925, which abolished mortgages by the conveyance of a fee simple.

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Friday, January 5, 2007

Financial viability of insurance companies

Financial stability and strength of the insurance company should be a major consideration when purchasing an insurance contract. An insurance premium paid currently provides coverage for losses that might arise many years in the future. For that reason, the viability of the insurance carrier is very important. In recent years, a number of insurance companies have become insolvent, leaving their policyholders with no coverage (or coverage only from a government-backed insurance pool with less attractive payouts for losses). A number of independent rating agencies, such as Best's, provide information and rate the financial viability of insurance companies.

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Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Life insurance and saving

Certain life insurance contracts accumulate cash values, which may be taken by the insured if the policy is surrendered or which may be borrowed against. Some policies, such as annuities and endowment policies, are financial instruments to accumulate or liquidate wealth when it is needed. See life insurance.

In many countries, such as the U.S. and the UK, tax law provides that the interest on this cash value is not taxable under certain circumstances. This leads to widespread use of life insurance as a tax-efficient method of saving as well as protection in the event of early death.

In U.S., interest income of life insurance policy (or annuity) is income tax deferred in general. However, its tax deferred benefit may be offset by a low return in some cases. This depends upon the insuring company, type of policy and other variables (mortality, market return, etc.). Also, other income tax saving vehicles (i.e. IRA, 401K or Roth IRA) appear to be better alternatives for value accumulation. Combination of low-cost term life insurance and higher return tax-efficient retirement account can achieve better performance.

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Tuesday, January 2, 2007

Types of insurance

Any risk that can be quantified probably has a type of insurance to protect it. Among the different types of insurance are:

# Automobile insurance, also known as auto insurance, car insurance and in the UK as motor insurance, is probably the most common form of insurance and may cover both legal liability claims against the driver and loss of or damage to the vehicle itself. Over most of the United States purchasing an auto insurance policy is required to legally operate a motor vehicle on public roads. Recommendations for which policy limits should be used are specified in a number of books. In some jurisdictions, bodily injury compensation for automobile accident victims has been changed to No Fault systems, which reduce or eliminate the ability to sue for compensation but provide automatic eligibility for benefits.

# Aviation insurance insures against Hull, Spares, Deductible, Hull War and Liability risks

# Boiler insurance (also known as Boiler and Machinery insurance or Equipment Breakdown Insurance)

# Casualty insurance insures against accidents, not necessarily tied to any specific property.

# Credit insurance pays some or all of a loan back when certain things happen to the borrower such as unemployment, disability, or death.

# Directors and Officers Insurance protects an organization (usually a corporation) from costs associated with litigation resulting from mistakes incurred by directors and officers for which they are liable. In the industry, it is usually called "D&O" for short.

# Financial loss insurance protects individuals and companies against various financial risks. For example, a business might purchase cover to protect it from loss of sales if a fire in a factory prevented it from carrying out its business for a time. Insurance might also cover failure of a creditor to pay money it owes to the insured. Fidelity bonds and surety bonds are included in this category.

# Health insurance policies will often cover the cost of private medical treatments if the NHS or other health organizations. It will often mean quicker health care where better facilities are available.

# Income protection insurance policies provide customers with financial support in the event of the policy holder being unable to work through illness or injury. It will provide monthly support to help pay of such financial commitment as mortgages and credit cards.

# Liability insurance covers legal claims against the insured. For example, a homeowner's insurance policy provides the insured with protection in the event of a claim brought by someone who slips and falls on the property, and brings a lawsuit for her injuries. Similarly, a doctor may purchase liability insurance to cover any legal claims against him if his negligence (carelessness) in treating a patient caused the patient injury and/or monetary harm. The protection offered by a liability insurance policy is twofold: a legal defense in the event of a lawsuit commenced against the policyholder, plus indemnification (payment on behalf of the insured) with respect to a settlement or court verdict.

# Purchase insurance is aimed at providing protection on the products people purchase. Purchase insurance can cover individual purchase protection, warranties, guarantees, care plans and even mobile phone insurance.

# Life insurance provides a cash benefit to a decedent's family or other designated beneficiary, and may specifically provide for burial, funeral and other final expenses.

# Annuities provide a stream of payments and are generally classified as insurance because they are issued by insurance companies and regulated as insurance. Annuities and pensions that pay a benefit for life are sometimes regarded as insurance against the possibility that a retiree will outlive his or her financial resources. In that sense, they are the complement of life insurance.

# Total permanent disability insurance insurance provides benefits when a person is permanently disabled and can no longer work in their profession, often taken as an adjunct to life insurance.

# Locked Funds Insurance is a little known hybrid insurance policy jointly issued by governments and banks. It is used to protect public funds from tamper by unauthorised parties. In special cases, a government may authorise its use in protecting semi-private funds which are liable to tamper. Terms of this type of insurance are usually very strict. As such it is only used in extreme cases where maximum security of funds is required.

# Marine Insurance covers the loss or damage of goods at sea. Marine insurance typically compensates the owner of merchandise for losses sustained from fire, shipwreck, etc., but excludes losses that can be recovered from the carrier.

# Nuclear incident insurance — damages resulting from an incident involving radioactivive materials is generally arranged at the national level. (For the United States, see Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act.)

# Environmental Liability Insurance protects the insured from bodily injury, property damage and cleanup costs as a result of the dispersal, release or escape of a pollutant.

# Pet Insurance insures pets against accidents and illnesses - some companies cover routine/wellness care and burial, as well.

# Political risk insurance can be taken out by businesses with operations in countries in which there is a risk that revolution or other political conditions will result in a loss.

# Professional Indemnity Insurance is normally a mandatory requirement for professional practitioners such as Architects, Lawyers, Doctors and Accountants to provide insurance cover against potential negligence claims. Non licensed professionals may also purchase malpractice insurance, it is commonly called Errors and Omissions Insurance and covers a service provider for claims made against them that arise out of the performance of specified professional services. For instance, a web site designer can obtain E&O insurance to cover them for certain claims made by third parties that arise out of negligent performance of web site development services.

# Property insurance provides protection against risks to property, such as fire, theft or weather damage. This includes specialized forms of insurance such as fire insurance, flood insurance, earthquake insurance, home insurance, inland marine insurance or boiler insurance.

# Title insurance provides a guarantee that title to real property is vested in the purchaser and/or mortgagee, free and clear of liens or encumbrances. It is usually issued in conjunction with a search of the public records done at the time of a real estate transaction.

# Travel insurance is an insurance cover taken by those who travel abroad, which covers certain losses such as medical expenses, lost of personal belongings, travel delay, personal liabilities.. etc.

# Workers' compensation insurance replaces all or part of a worker's wages lost and accompanying medical expense incurred due to a job-related injury.

A single policy may cover risks in one or more of the above categories. For example, car insurance would typically cover both property risk (covering the risk of theft or damage to the car) and liability risk (covering legal claims from say, causing an accident). A homeowner's insurance policy in the U.S. typically includes property insurance covering damage to the home and the owner's belongings, liability insurance covering certain legal claims against the owner, and even a small amount of health insurance for medical expenses of guests who are injured on the owner's property.

Potential sources of risk that may give rise to claims are known as "perils". Examples of perils might be fire, theft, earthquake, hurricane and many other potential risks. An insurance policy will set out in details which perils are covered by the policy and which are not.

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Monday, January 1, 2007

Insurer’s Business Model

Profit = Earned Premium + Investment Income - Incurred Loss - Underwriting Expenses.

Insurers make money in two ways. Through underwriting, the process through which insurers select what risks to insure and decide how much premium to charge for accepting those risks and by investing the premiums they have collected from insureds.

The most difficult aspect of the insurance business is the underwriting of policies. Based on a wide assortment of data, insurers predict the likelihood that a claim will be made against their policies and price products accordingly. To this end, the industry uses actuarial science to quantify the risk they are willing to assume. Data is analyzed fairly accurately to project the rate of future claims based on a given risk. Actuarial science uses statistics and probability to analyze the risks associated with the range of perils covered, and these scientific principles are used to determine the insurers overall exposure. At the end of a given policy, the amount of premium collected minus the amount paid out in claims is the insurer's underwriting profit.

An insurer's underwriting performance is measured in their combined ratio. The loss ratio (incurred losses and loss-adjustment expenses divided by net earned premium) is added to the expense ratio (underwriting expenses divided by net premium written) to determine the company's combined ratio. The combined ratio is a reflection of the company's overall underwriting profitability. A combined ratio of less than 100 percent indicates profitability, while anything over 100 indicates a loss.

Insurance companies also earn investment profits on “float”. “Float” or available reserve is the amount of money, at-hand at any given moment, that an insurer has collected in insurance premium but has not been paid out in claims. Insurers start investing insurance premium as soon as it is collected and keeps earning interest on it until claims are paid out.

In the United States, the underwriting loss of property and casualty insurance companies was $142.3 billion in the five years ending 2003. But overall profit for the same period was $68.4 billion, at the result of float. Some insurance industry insiders, most notably Hank Greenberg, do not believe that it is forever possible to sustain a profit from float without an underwriting profit as well, but this opinion is not universally held. Naturally, the “float” method is difficult to carry out in an economically depressed period. Bear markets do cause insurers to shift away from investments and to toughen up their underwriting standards. So a poor economy generally means high insurance premiums. In general, this tendency to swing between profitable and unprofitable time periods alternating over time cycles is commonly known as the "underwriting" or "insurance" cycle.

Insurers currently make the most money from their auto insurance line of business. Generally better statistics are available on auto losses and underwriting on this line of business has benefited greatly from advances in computing. Additionally, property losses in the US, due to natural catastrophes, have perpetuated this trend.

Finally, claims and loss handling is the materialized utility of insurance. Claims handling management in insurance companies is to balance the triangle elements of customer satisfaction, administrative handling expenses, and claims overpayment leakages. Within this triangle, insurance fraud is a major business risk to manage and overcome.

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Principles of insurance

From the point of view of the insurance company there are four general criteria for deciding whether to insure events or not.

1. There must be a larger number of similar objects so the financial outcome of insuring the pool of exposures is predictable. Therefore they can calculate a "fair" premium.

2. The losses have to be accidental and unintentional from the point of view of the insured.

3. The losses must be measurable, identifiable in location, time, and be definite. They also want the losses to cause economic hardship. That is, so the insured has an incentive to protect and preserve the property to minimize the probability that the losses occur.

4. The loss potential to the insurer must be non-catastrophic. It cannot put the insurance company in financial jeopardy.

Losses must be uncertain.

The rate and distribution of losses must be predictable: To set premiums (prices) insurers must be able to estimate them accurately. This is done using the Law of Large Numbers which states that: The larger the number of homogenous exposures considered, the more closely the losses reported will equal the underlying probability of loss. If the coverage is unique, the insured will pay a correspondingly higher premium. Lloyd's of London often accepts unique coverages. (e.g., the insuring of Tina Turner's legs and Jennifer Lopez's buttocks)

The loss must be significant: The legal principle of De minimis dictates that trivial matters are not covered. Furthermore, rational insurance uses existing insurance when the transaction costs dictate that filing a claim is not rational. Actually, De minimis does not come into play here. The reality is that it costs too much to insure frequent and/or small losses. It is much more cost effective to not transfer small loss potential to insurance companies by taking the largest deductible that you can stand (given adequate price reduction). As for filing small claims, if the insurance company contractually should pay for it, you should file it. This is the difference between deciding before the contract the parameters and after following through.

The loss must not be catastrophic: If the insurer is insolvent, it will be unable to pay the insured. In the United States, there is a system of Guarantee Funds that run at the state level to reimburse insured people whose insurance companies have become insolvent. [1] This program is run by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). [2] In the United Kingdom, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), which regulates all insurance companies, has its own standards of solvency which must, by law, be adhered to.

To avoid catastrophic depletion of their own capital, insurers almost universally purchase reinsurance to protect them against excessively large accumulations of risk in a single area, and to protect them against large-scale catastrophes.

Additionally, “speculative risks” like those incurred through gambling or through the purchase of company stocks are uninsurable. Insurable risks should have accidental and not intentional losses, and they should have economical feasible premiums, meaning that chance of loss must not be too high.

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