Insurance

Insurance is contract in which one party, the insurer, agrees to indemnify another, the insured, against loss which the letter might suffer, in any way other than by his own willful or negligent act. Insurance has become a highly specialized form of business and is regulated by statute, which fixes the form the contract may take and rigidly supervises those engaged in issuing such contracts, generally large corporations. The contract is called the policy, and is usually in standard form.  The consideration is regularly paid periodically by the insured and is called a premium.  It is essentially aleatory, since the loss insured against is either unlikely to happen, as in fire insurance etc., or else the time at which it might happen in uncertain, as in life insurance.