Industrial Assurance Agent.
The industrial life insurance offices and friendly societies employ representatives to call at the homes of their policyholders to collect the weekly premiums and hopefully to sell further policies. They are not intermediaries in the same way as the others. In this case the representative is employed by the insurance company but nevertheless he or she performs the functions of an intermediary.
SELF-INSURANCE
As an alternative to purchasing insurarice in the market, or as an adjunct to it where the first layer or proportion of a claim is not insured in the commercial market, some public bodies and large industrial concerns set aside funds to meet insurable losses. As the risk is retained within the organisation, there is no market transaction of buying and selling.
These organisations have made decisions to self-insure because they feel they are large enough financially to carry such losses, and because the cost to them, by way of transfers to the fund, is lower than commercial premium levels as they are saving the insurer's administration costs and profit.
REINSURANCE
Having decided on the maximum that it is prepared to lose in the event of a major loss, an insurer is faced with a number of choices. He may refuse the risk, agree to accept a part of it ("coinsurance") or accept it with the intention of reinsuring. What is important to know here is that an insurer is faced with the same pioblem as the insured - to share his risk so as not to suffer a loss that would be catastrophic. In the case of co-insurance, insurers share the risk (in the same way as Lloyd's underwriters share risks).
Co-insurance differs from re-insurance inasmuch as the insured has a relationship with every insurer whose name appears on the policy document. In re-insurance the insurer is himself fully liable to the insured because he (the insurer) has made arrangements for reinsurance and the failure of the reinsurer cannot therefore affect the insured.
