Insurance is provided to the public by three major sources:
Some organizations resemble private insurance companies by offering protection against the financial loss caused by illness and accidents. However, in key respects these organizations are quite different from private insurers. Examples of service providers are health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and preferred provider organizations (PPOs). Service providers will be discussed in detail later in this text.
The federal government offers a variety of military life and health insurance plans (SGLI, or Servicemen’s Group Life Insurance, TRICARE, and CHAMPUS) as well as Medicare, which is the health insurance part of Social Security.
At the state level, governments are involved in providing unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation programs, and state-run medical expense insurance plans (Medicaid).
Federal, state, and local governments provide social insurance to a segment of the population that would otherwise be without coverage.
Private insurers may be organized as stock companies, mutual companies, reciprocal insurers, or fraternal organizations. An insurance company intending to do business in any given state must be authorized by the director/commissioner of insurance. If the director is satisfied that the insurer meets that state’s standards of financial strength, and that allowing them the opportunity to sell insurance in the state doesn’t jeopardize the public interest, they will be granted a certificate of authority and will be referred to as admitted or authorized.
Companies that are structured in a traditional corporate manner are called stock companies. These companies are owned by stockholders who may or may not be policy owners. Profits made by a stock company are passed on to the stockholders in the form of stock dividends. Most life insurance companies today are stock companies, but most of the in force insurance is held by mutual companies.
A mutual insurance company is owned by its policy owners. It is structured as a corporation, with the exception that ownership in the company is evidenced through ownership of a policy, not a stock certificate. Earnings from a mutual company’s operations are passed on to the policy owners in the form of policy dividends.
Mutual companies distribute policy dividends through participating policies. This term reflects the fact that policy owners participate in the earnings of the company. Stock companies generally issue only non-participating policies, meaning that policy owners do not share in company profits.
Through individual indemnity agreements certain groups of people provide insurance for one another. Each insured of the reciprocal is called a subscriber. Each subscriber is allocated a separate account where his/her premiums are paid and interest earned is tracked. If any subscriber suffers a loss covered by the reciprocal insurance, each subscriber’s account would be charged an equal amount to pay the claim. The party who acts as principal of a reciprocal insurance company is known as an attorney-in-fact.
A fourth type of organization in the business of issuing life and health insurance is the fraternal organization. A fraternal organization is a nonprofit entity that sells only to its members, and that must be created for some purpose other than selling insurance. These organizations must have a representative form of management with elected officers. A distinguishing characteristic of fraternal life insurance is the open contract, which allows fraternal insurers to assess their policyholders in times of financial difficulty.
Lloyd’s of London is not an insurance company, but is similar to a stock exchange. Just as an exchange provides facilities for its members but does not buy or sell securities itself, Lloyd’s provides a meeting place to its members who actually transact the business of insurance. Members may be individuals or corporations and are grouped into syndicates, but they remain individually liable and responsible for the contracts of insurance they enter into.
For some risks, the only market may be with specialty carriers. Excess and Surplus Lines is the name given to insurance for which there is no market or insurance available through authorized carriers in the state where the risk arises or is located.
Reinsurance is a contract between insurers that exists when one insurer (the reinsurer) agrees to accept a portion of a risk covered by another insurer (typically a smaller company). The ceding company is responsible for any coverage it has written, but will have a legitimate claim against the reinsurer for any portion of its loss that is reinsured.
Another method of categorizing private insurers that disregards whether they are a stock, mutual, reciprocal, or fraternal organization relates to the regulation of insurers. To better understand this concept, it is important to know that the insurance industry is regulated primarily at the state level (not federal) and insurers can be categorized by their state of domicile.
After the South-Eastern Underwriters Decision established that insurance transacted across state lines was interstate commerce, the McCarran-Ferguson Act was drafted to give the federal government the right to regulate insurance, but only to the extent that the state does not.
An insurance company headquartered and charted in the state in question is a domestic insurer. For example, XYZ Life Insurance Company is headquartered in Arizona. In Arizona, XYZ Life Insurance Company is a domestic insurer.
A company whose home office is in another state is a foreign company. Using the example from above, XYZ Life Insurance Company is a foreign company in Vermont. A company headquartered in another country is an alien company. XYZ Life Insurance Company would be considered an alien insurer in Canada.
Insurance is provided to the public through 3 main sources: Service Providers, Government, and Private Commercial Insurers.
Private insurers are further divided into different types:
Other types of private insurers include Lloyd’s of London (not an insurance company but a market for insurance transactions), Excess and Surplus Lines (specialty carriers for unique risks), and reinsurers (accept a portion of risk from other insurers).
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