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Insurance is a modern risk-management tool. Although the idea is novel, its practice is not free of interest, uncertainty and elements of gambling. Takaful has been introduced as an alternative to modern insurance. India has an established insurance industry, and although the country has the second largest Muslim population in the world, takaful has not been introduced there. Moreover, no research has examined how internal forces affect policy-holders to buy new insurance products such as takaful in India. This study aims to examine whether internal factors influence individual insurance policy-holders to open up to takaful. As internal factors reflect the innovative nature of policy-holders, this paper seeks to determine whether there is significant difference in the innovative nature of two independent sample groups (e.g. between Muslims and non-Muslims) in participating in takaful.

New product adoption theory is used in developing the hypotheses and a questionnaire. Snowball sampling method is used in this survey, with a sample size of 909 respondents, including Muslim and non-Muslim policy-holders. The internal forces that encourage potential policy-holders to participate in takaful is the independent variable here, while the respondents’ actual willingness to participate in takaful is the dependent variable. Religion and level of education are used as control variables, and regression and T-tests are performed to analyze the data.

Results show that the internal factors have significant impact at 1 per cent on the acceptance of takaful by policy-holders. There is also a significant difference in the innovative nature between Muslims and non-Muslims. Mean values from the T-test show that Muslims are more innovative than non-Muslims in India, offering a good sign for India to start offering takaful, as Muslims could be the core customer base.

This study focuses on internal factors influencing individual policy-holders’ willingness to participate in takaful. The findings can be the starting point for future research exploring the influence of external factors on such willingness to participate with potential benefits to local authorities, investors, insurance companies and the public in India.

This study provides crucial information about the demand side of takaful in India. The innovative nature of Indian policy-holders signals positive potential for operators to offer takaful in India and to concerned regulatory bodies to expedite its introduction to the market.

Few issues in business ethics are as polarizing as the practice of risk classification and underwriting in the insurance industry. Theorists who approach the issue from a background in economics often start from the assumption that policy-holders should be charged a rate that reflects the expected loss that they bring to the insurance scheme. Yet theorists who approach the question from a background in philosophy or civil rights law often begin with a presumption against so-called “actuarially fair” premiums and in favor of “community rating,” in which everyone is charged the same price. This paper begins by examining and rejecting the three primary arguments that have been given to show that actuarially fair premiums are unjust. It then considers the two primary arguments that have been offered by those who wish to defend the practice of risk classification. These arguments overshoot their target, by requiring a “freedom to underwrite” that is much greater than the level of freedom enjoyed in most other commercial transactions. The paper concludes by presenting a defense of a more limited right to underwrite, one that grants the legitimacy of the central principle of risk classification, but permits specific deviations from that ideal when other important social goods are at stake.

When Equitable Life went to court in a case concerning the bonus rates it applied to pension policies with guaranteed annuity options, it emphasised that its rules gave it wide discretion in its bonus decisions, an argument that was unsuccessful. This paper considers the constraints on the discretion available to life insurers in the way they determine bonuses on with‐profits policies. It reviews four previous court cases concerning withprofits policies: in one of these, the insurer lost. The Financial Services Authority has now taken on board the need for life insurers to describe their bonus practices far more fully. That will help lead to a more precisely defined contract between policyholders and insurers. It is also proposing new rules, which should reduce the potential for discretion to be abused. The paper also considers the actuarial profession, whose members have the responsibility of making recommendations to life insurers about bonuses. It suggests there may be benefit if the profession can go beyond the limited guidance on bonuses it has issued, to develop and publish best practice in the bonus declaration process.

A large dairy stopped endlessly battling competitors for market share and instead concentrated on making the retailer and distributor the target of its operation. This change in focus uncovered new opportunities to create customer‐valued differentiation of its products. Case 2: At a time when most insurance companies were debating whether their customer was the policy holder or the beneficiary, this insurer realized that the agent/broker was its real customer, and that its operations had to be redesigned in order to provide satisfactory products and service.

The Insurance Ombudsman Bureau was the first of the ‘commercial’ Ombudsman schemes and provided a model for those which came after. The Ombudsman has very wide powers to enable him to investigate and decide upon complaints by policy‐holders against their insurers. However, not unnaturally perhaps, no scheme like this can do everything that might be expected of it and this paper explores those areas where the IOB's ability to help members of the public falls short of expectation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role that weather shocks can play in the livestock mortality microinsurance take-up when the insured risk has a prevalent covariant component.

The sample consists of 360 rural Ethiopian households. Data were collected in a panel-structure at the end of three agricultural seasons (2011-2013). In the questionnaire, a specific section on insurance was meant to collect information on the farmer’s willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a set of insurance products, including livestock mortality insurance. Two OLS regression models and a quantile regression model were employed to estimate the impact of weather anomalies on the WTP for the insurance product.

The authors find that weather anomalies contribute to changes in the WTP to a large extent. Negative (positive) changes in precipitation (temperature) anomalies can lead to more than a 30 percent reduction in the WTP. This general finding is complemented with the analysis of the conditional distribution of the WTP, which shows that other elements can prevail for low values of the conditional distribution. In this case, the WTP seems to be represented more by the interviewee’s age and basic knowledge of insurance, and village fixed-effects. Basic knowledge of insurance, in particular, can increase WTP by about 60 percent.

This paper has straightforward implications from a policy perspective. It suggests that farmers would prefer an insurance premium that follows the changes in the systemic component. On the contrary, insurance as well as reinsurance companies are usually reluctant to frequently revise their premiums. Financial education programs, farmer-driven design, trust building, and bundling insurance with other financial and non-financial products can increase the value proposition perceived by the farmers. From a marketing perspective, the overall findings suggest that continuous fine-tuning of the contract, transparency, and targeted information campaigns can contribute to increase and stabilize potential customers’ WTP.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that considers the impact of weather shocks on the WTP for a livestock mortality insurance product. Livestock is one of the most strategic assets of poor rural households in Africa. This study contributes to the theoretical and empirical literature on the determinants of weather insurance take-up in developing countries and, in particular, the role of spatiotemporal adverse selection and basis risk (e.g. Jensen et al., 2016).

The objective of this study is to identify how risk and social variables are likely to be impacted by an increase in private sector participation in health insurance provision. The study focuses on the Chilean health insurance industry, traditionally dominated by the public sector.

Predictive risk modelling is conducted using a database containing over 250,000 health insurance policy records provided by the Superintendence of Health of Chile.

Although perceived with suspicion in some circles, risk segmentation serves as a rational approach to risk management from a resource perspective. The variables that have considerable impact on insurance claims include the number of dependents, gender, wages and the duration a claimant has been a customer.

As shown in the case study, to ensure that social benefits are realised, increased private sector participation in health insurance must be augmented by regulatory oversight and vigilance.

As it is clear that a “community-rated” health insurance provision philosophy impacts on insurance firm's ability to charge “market” prices for insurance provision, the authors explore whether risk segmentation is a feasible means of predicting insurance claim behaviour in Chile's private health insurance industry.

The Secretary of State, in exercise of his powers under sections 1(2) and (3)(a), 2(2), 4(1) and (2) and 6 of the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 (hereinafter referred to as “the Act”) and of all other powers enabling him in that behalf, hereby makes the following Regulations:—

Reviews an initiative within a loss adjuster’s operation to create a high performance team. Focuses on the role of the manager in influencing team behaviour and changing the prevailing team culture. Asserts that the system in which the team works has a major influence on performance and demonstrates how management in this case organisation was encouraged to review its work system. Reports on how adjustments made by management to the work system impacted positively on the performance of the team and how changes in the manager’s behaviour led to team members taking greater responsibility for departmental tasks and goals.

The practice of insuring essentially involves the determination and assignment of risk to individuals. Such determinations are made almost exclusively on the basis of statistical models. As such, the determination of an individual's risk in relation to a particular form of insurance, and thus ultimately to the determination of the cost and availability of that insurance for the individual, is made in relation to her inclusion in certain statistical groups. However, a number of questions, both practical and philosophical, can be raised about the way in which an individual is assessed upon the basis of such statistical modeling. In this paper, I explore some of these issues in relation to questions of fairness. I begin by examining the basic structure of statistical risk assessment for insurance purposes. I argue that the underlying ethical concern involved with such cases involves the manner in which the attributes of the statistical groups used for insurance purposes can be said to fairly represent the individual qua individual. As such, I go on to explore the general philosophical issues involved in applying statistical models to individuals and the fairness of using such applications to make determinations about individuals for insurance purposes.