Insurance Studies (21st Century Insurance Series Textbooks)

Author: Zhang Hongtao et al.
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-10-17
Features: This book covers a very broad range of topics, including specialized fields such as commercial insurance, social insurance, and policy insurance between the two. It also touches on fields such as finance, law, mathematics, and even disaster science. Based on a broad definition of insurance and with an emphasis on systematic coherence, the book primarily focuses on the theory and operational practices of commercial insurance. It is divided into five main parts: Introduction, Insurance Basics, Types of Insurance, Insurance Operations, and Insurance Regulation.
Part I: Introduction starts with logical and historical perspectives, emphasizing the theory of risk and the development of insurance.
Part II: Insurance Basics introduces various schools of insurance thought, insurance concepts, the mathematical foundation of insurance, insurance principles, insurance contracts, insurance markets, and the interactive relationship between insurance and the economy.
Part III: Types of Insurance categorizes insurance broadly into commercial insurance, social insurance, and policy insurance.
Part IV: Insurance Operations covers the various stages of insurance business development, including product development, underwriting, loss prevention and claims handling, insurance reserves, and insurance investment. It focuses on practical knowledge and operational skills in each stage, particularly highlighting the relationship between insurance investment and insurance operations, revealing the inevitable laws of modern insurance industry development.
Part V: Insurance Regulation discusses the importance of regulation from a supervisory perspective, emphasizing its role in ensuring the smooth operation of the insurance mechanism. Due to the differences in nature and operational methods among various socialized insurance mechanisms, insurance studies are often synonymous with commercial insurance studies in many contexts.
This book proposes the concept of broad insurance studies and reflects it in the overall structure and related content. However, considering that the primary audience of this book is students and professionals in commercial insurance, and that constructing broad insurance studies is not yet complete, the main focus of this book remains commercial insurance—the content that commercial insurance studies should cover. The insurance studies mentioned in subsequent sections also refer to commercial insurance studies. Clarifying this point does not contradict our advocacy for broad insurance studies.
In summary, the research object of commercial insurance studies is the insurance commodity transaction and the economic relationships embodied in such transactions. This transaction behavior is based on the objective existence of various risks, follows the principle of equal exchange, and is governed by the concluded insurance contract. Its external form is the buying and selling of insurance policies, while its content is the transfer of specific risk losses and the guarantee of interests. The uniqueness of insurance transaction behavior determines that the study of narrow insurance has characteristics that no other discipline can replace.